Re: Confusion between tick/tock and times

Posted by gs99 on
URL: http://nand2tetris-questions-and-answers-forum.52.s1.nabble.com/Confusion-between-tick-tock-and-times-tp4026166p4026195.html

cadet1620 wrote

The Hardware Simulator is by no means a simulator of real hardware, it is a theoretical simulation of idealized synchronous sequential circuits. Trying to relate its behavior to real hardware is nonsensical.

From our textbook:
“We believe that the best way to understand how computers work is to build one from scratch… The computer system described in the book is for real–– it can actually be built, and it works!”–– Preface.
 
“We provide a simple hardware simulator that is sufficiently powerful to support sophisticated hardware design projects. In particular, the simulator provides all the necessary tools for building, testing, and integrating all the chips presented in this book, leading to the construction of a general-purpose computer.”–– p. 17.

I have confidence that Hardware Simulator behaves as real hardware, for our purpose here.
And I’ve found it helpful to understand how its “tick” and “tock” relate to other learning methods (e.g. interactive diagrams in Logisim and play-hookie.com). Hope others may benefit in same way.

QQ
The Hardware Simulator only has two discrete time quanta, tick and tock, so those are the only times that the "set" command can be applied.

I was thinking in simpler terms of what you said earlier:
"What's important is to understand that the clock is a periodic event."  
That led me to learn about the falling edge (at play-hookie.com) and how it relates to tock.

Also, up to the point of building RAM8, we’ve been entering “set” lines Before the tick and tock events, e.g.
set load 1,
set in 0,
tick, output;
tock, output;

Now I need to get back to making RAM64.