Sprout24 is a "know-your-roots" computer processor — designed and built from the ground up
as a teaching tool to help introduce the basics of computer science and
demystify how computers work.
early code execution test
We've heard that computers work entirely in ones and zeroes... but what does
that even mean? How is that really enough to let modern computers, phones, and devices
do all the amazing things that they can?
Let's take a look together at how that all works, using the design of
the Sprout24 along the way to illustrate how simple pieces working together like
an orchestra can make beautiful things possible.
Development is currently underway, having just reached a big milestone with the
assembly and start of testing of the first complete CPU. A more complete public
project launch is expected later in 2023, with plans to present
it at Penguicon 2024. I'm looking forward to sharing more with you!
April 6, 2023 —
Hello! This project has suddenly received a lot of attention that I wasn't expecting... so welcome, new friends! This has been just
a quick introduction page until now, but now that I have a fully-assembled CPU, I'm going to start
sharing some more technical details. I hope you'll continue to check in as I keep moving forward with it.
Some quick highlights:
24-bit CPU
Load/store architecture
Word-addressing
RISC-style instruction set
53 instructions and interrupt support
Lightly pipelined
Working assembler and emulator
25 PCBs and 2,634 components
1,054 ICs, many of which are single logic gates
Approx. 9,700 total logic gates or 29,300 transistors
730 LEDs
April 5, 2023 —
She's now officially been powered on and executed her first code. I'm so excited for this!
I did find a design oops on the carry-lookahead adder that increments the program counter,
so it goes haywire after counting to 256, but I think I will be able to bodge that to be
able to finish testing.
April 4, 2023 —
All boards are tested as well as they can be individually. Tonight I assembled all the boards
together, and she's beautiful. I'll be powering the whole thing up and starting to test it in
the coming days.
April 1, 2023 —
Assembled ALU and Register 01 boards are complete and match emulator in testing.
Register File and Control Unit are complete and pass spot-check testing.
March 30, 2023 —
The order is in, and all 25 boards that make up the CPU are ready to test and assemble!
March 8, 2023 —
Placed order for all remaining CPU boards, including the Southeast and East Bridge boards.
Now we wait.
March 3, 2023 —
My bank flagged the PCB order as suspicious, so I had to call them to confirm it was
legit. In the meantime I noticed an omission in the Register File board, so I put the order on
hold and made a revision B for the Register File and West Bridge boards. At this point, I'm
close enough on the layout of the Southeast board that I'm going to wait to try the order again
until I can include the Southeast and East Bridge boards too.
February 28, 2023 —
The Register File, Register 01, Northwest, and West Bridge board designs are now finished, and
I just placed an order for those plus the Control Unit and ALU Core boards. There will be a
lot of things to test once this order shows up.
February 1, 2023 —
The Control Unit and ALU Core boards are ready to order, though I'm going to wait until I have
a couple others ready to save on shipping costs.
Next to design are the "Northwest" board that includes components related to the program counter
and stack pointer, and the "Southeast" board that relates to the instruction and status registers.
And I now have a tentative physical layout for how the individual boards will fit together into a
complete CPU. Two additional helper boards with no components will sit below the rest of the boards
for physical support and for routing busses between the boards above.
December 22, 2022 —
The CPU's Control Unit is working and tested in the emulator, and now it's time to turn it into hardware. More details and a demo in
this video.
November 22, 2021 — Ordered ALU Adder, ALU Logic, ALU Shifter, ShiftBusRead, ShiftBusWrite
October 2, 2021 — Ordered Register rev.B
March 1, 2020 — Ordered Register
February 5, 2020 — First KiCAD PCB sketch — for register board
September 27, 2019 — More design goals and ideas; sketches of board layouts
September 25, 2019 — Start of project notebook: description, what, why, first sketches of opcodes and isa,
instruction encoding, register tower.