CPU Architecture begins below assembly language, where voltage becomes logic and logic becomes a machine capable of following instructions.
Students construct an original 8-bit processor from transistors and logic devices, building each subsystem on the previous one until arithmetic, storage, timing, and control operate together.
The course in context
See both engineering courses alongside my astrophotography and the software I build with OpenAI Codex.
Review four illustrated folio studies →What students learn
Reason from signals
Connect electricity, transistor switching, Boolean logic, and digital timing without skipping layers.
Build the datapath
Create arithmetic, storage, and bus subsystems and understand how data moves among them.
Define a machine
Design instructions and control sequences that turn hardware into a programmable processor.
Curriculum arc
Electricity and transistors
Voltage, current, resistance, breadboards, polarity, pull-up and pull-down resistors, and the transistor as a switch.
Boolean logic
Build NOT, NAND, AND, OR, and XOR gates, then use truth tables to describe and verify their behavior.
Arithmetic
Combine gates into half adders, full adders, an 8-bit ALU, and two’s-complement subtraction.
State and registers
Move from RS latches and D latches to flip-flops, registers, and the stored state a processor needs.
Buses, memory, and timing
Use high-impedance outputs, shared buses, clocks, program counters, and RAM to coordinate data movement.
Control and instructions
Design an instruction set and control sequencing that coordinates the datapath and executes complete programs.
Projects
Instead of memorizing a CPU block diagram, students earn it—constructing and debugging each block until the diagram describes something working on the bench.
An 8-bit datapath
Registers, buses, arithmetic, and status behavior assembled from understandable logic.
A control system
Clocked sequencing and control words that coordinate each instruction step.
A programmable CPU
A complete processor executing a small instruction set and programs designed by the student.
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Tell me about your process, your students, or the software you want to build. We begin with goals, constraints, and timing, then agree on scope, deliverables, and fees before work begins.
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