Haupz Blog

... still a totally disordered mix

Contemporary CPU Architecture

2022-03-25 — Michael Haupt

Building a CPU (or other hardware device) emulator is a fun endeavour - I've built myself half a Z80 emulator in Smalltalk once, test-driven development and all.

However, writing comparatively low-level code in the 21st century is really old-school. You have to use contemporary technology for everything now. That includes building emulators.

Consequently, David Tyler has built an 8080 emulator complete with computer and CP/M operating system to run on the CPU. It being "today", he has of course applied what is en vogue. That means microservices (one for each opcode supported by the CPU, just in case you were wondering), Docker, and the like. It's super hilarious. In fact, it's a more than valid successor to this wonderful enterprise Java implementation of FizzBuzz.

Tags: hacking, the-nerdy-bit