I suggest you take classes on Computer Architecture and History.
I'm a first year Electrical Engineering student myself and I spent an entire semester on the MIPS architecture. I even built my own extensions to a Verilog based mini-MIPS. A CPU is nothing more than a very large collection of Transistors. One can use transistors in specific ways to create logical gates (takes 3 or so transistors). The AND, OR and Invertor are the basic building blocks. For an AND if all input voltages are Binary 1 (>2V usually), then the output is also Binary 1. Now, It's mathematically proven you can write every possible evaluation as a large logical composition of these gates. Enter the first computer! | |
Xeronage wrote:
A CPU is nothing more than a very large collection of Transistors. It also contains a numbers of arithmetic logic unit's or sometimes even one. (Thanks Stupot) =) | |
It also contains a numbers of arithmetic logic unit's or sometimes even one. (Thanks Stupot) =) What do you think ALUs are built out of? | |
Teh horror! Teh horror!
In order to find out what that was like, just pull out your old time machine and go back a few decades. Within the 1900s, digital computers were created, languages evolved through machine code and macro instructions, to high level languages that started to crop up. If you'd been born in the 60s you'd have had a chance to start out with C for the first time. (Thanks Wiki)
It's all just about evolution.
Imagine, trying to turn a nice chunk of sabertooth tiger into something edible, when you don't have a stove, or an oven, or a barbeque, and don't even know how to build a fire! Oh noez!