Build a working game of Tetris in Conway's Game of Life (2014)
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2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
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HN comment orderThis is simply… incredibly impressive. I wasn’t expecting they would build a computer all the way up from a CPU and memory to an assembler to a compiler, all in the game of life. Kudos.
I'm going to need a faster machine :( The in-browser version just burns CPU for me, with no visible change after a few minutes. Another amazing game-of-life machine is the digital clock: https://copy.sh/life/?gist=f3413564b1fa9c69f2bad4b0400b8090&... - it's a bit less CPU hungry too
A really incredible achievement. The team created an entire clockless (no central timing) RISC CPU; there's some fascinating implementation details. They created an assembler to convert machine language into ROM macro cells, a C-like higher level language, are working on a more-powerful language, and are creating a GCC backend. Highly recommended for anyone interested in computer architecture.
It is amazing how they effectively built a computer in the game of life for this, even to the extent of it having its own assembly and higher level languages. It is also awesome to see people come together for such a long time to come up with a solution to even a relatively esoteric problem like this
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- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 496
- Total comments
- 47
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking