http://ravrlab.ru/en/courses/vcb/ Recent content in Building 8-bit computer in VCB simulator (WIP) on RAVR Lab Hugo en-us Sat, 24 Jan 2026 09:30:00 +0000 http://ravrlab.ru/en/courses/vcb/vcb_cpu/ Sat, 24 Jan 2026 09:30:00 +0000 http://ravrlab.ru/en/courses/vcb/vcb_cpu/ VCB components In VCB you are abstracted away from transistors, diods, etc. implementations of real components. You use logic gates, delay and similar stuff instead. Adders Terms: Adder — scheme for summation of bits Full adder — adder with carry in/out Full 1-bit adder. Bit A added to bit B. To construct 4-bit adder, you just need to stack 4 1-bit adders. Full 4-bit adder. A0-A1-A2-A3 is added to B0-B1-B2-B3. You obviously can construct 8-bit adder in same manner. http://ravrlab.ru/en/courses/vcb/vcb_overture/ Sat, 24 Jan 2026 08:30:00 +0000 http://ravrlab.ru/en/courses/vcb/vcb_overture/ Overture is the first PC architecture you build in Turing Complete game. In terms of CPU design it represents Harward Architecture (which is…?). It consists of: 8-bit instructions and registers External 256 byte instructions memory No external RAM (you have only registers for that) 4 operation groups ALU-related (add, sub, …) moving data from/to registers comparisons jump to instruction N (via writing to r7) 8 registers: 6 general use registers (r0. http://ravrlab.ru/en/courses/vcb/cpu_sims/ Sat, 24 Jan 2026 06:40:00 +0000 http://ravrlab.ru/en/courses/vcb/cpu_sims/ Games I played for many hours Turing Complete (TC) (Steam link) Game on Steam, guides you on how to build working computer (including writing assembly code for it) starting from NAND gates. Has best-in-class built-in tutorial, may take around ~20..40 hours to build your first architecture Currently guides you on building 3 different architectures: Overture, LEG and Sympony (in alpha-2.0 version) Hardware details are abstracted away, electrical current propagates to whole scheme at every tick Has nested components Has built-in assembly compiler (you create commands like «mov r0, r1» which auto-translate to for example 8-bit code like 01000001) Has sandbox mode If you are new to CPU architecture, for sure choose this one. http://ravrlab.ru/en/courses/vcb/cpu_history/ Sat, 24 Jan 2026 06:30:00 +0000 http://ravrlab.ru/en/courses/vcb/cpu_history/ CPU design approach in general splits into 2 most important branches: CISC architecture — design with complex instructions set RISC architecture — design with small set of simple instructions Intel (upto Pentium 4) Intel processors are all CISC. Main feature Timeline 4 bit 4004 (1971) → 4040 (1974) 8 bit 8008 (1972) → 8080 (1974) → Z80 (1976) 16 bit 8086 (1978) → 8088 (1979) 32 bit 80386 (1985) High Perf 80486 (1989) → Intel Pentium (1993) Multi-core Pentium Pro (1995) → Pentium 2, Pentium 3 → Pentium 4 (2000) Features that new processors introduced: