30 Potato-1 (Brainfuck CPU)
30 : Potato-1 (Brainfuck CPU)
- Author: Pepper Gray (they/them)
- Description: Potato-1 is part of a Brainfuck CPU. It is only the control logic, i.e. you have to bring your own registers, memory controller and io logic. It is very simple, hence likely very slow: You could probably run your brainfuck code on a potato and it would be equally fast, hence the name. The project picture was generated using DALL·E.
- GitHub repository
- Clock: 12500 Hz
How it works
Each rising edge the CU will read in the instruction, zero flag and IO Wait flag and process it. Each falling edge the output pins will be updated. The output pins indiciate which action to take, i.e. which registers to increment/decrement. If Put or Get pin is set, the CU will pause execution until IO Wait is unset. If IO Wait is already unset, the CU will immidiatly execute the next command without waiting.
Additionaly to the 8 original brainfuck instructions there is a HALT instruction to stop execution and a NOP instructions to do nothing, also there are unused instruction (some of them may be used to extend the instruction set in a later itteration).
Instructions: 0000 > Increment the data pointer 0001 < Decrement data pointer 0010 + Increment value 0011 - Decrement value 0100 . Write value 0101 , Read value 0110 [ Start Loop (enter if value is non-zero, else jump to matchin ']') 0111 ] End Loop (leave if value is zero, , else jump to matchin '[') 1000 NOP No Operation 1111 HALT Halt Execution
How to test
Reset: Set Reset_n=0 and wait one clockycycle
Run: Set Reset_n=1
Simple Test:
- all input pins zero
- clock cycle
- Reset_n high
- clock cylce --> PC++ high, all outer outputs are low
Check test/test.py for small scripts to verify the CU logic
External hardware
Bidirectional Counter (3x)
- program counter
- data pointer
- value ROM (addressed via programm counter) RAM (addressed via data pointer, all bytes must be zero after reset)
some TTL gates, e.g. to configure that the value is written to RAM every time it is changed or the data pointer is changed
IO
| # | Input | Output |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Clock | PC++ |
| 1 | Reset_n | PC-- |
| 2 | IO Wait | X++ |
| 3 | Zero Flag | X-- |
| 4 | Instruction[0] | A++ |
| 5 | Instruction[1] | A-- |
| 6 | Instruction[2] | Put |
| 7 | Instruction[3] | Get |