Re: Number of NAND gates in the HACK computer

Posted by Renslay on Jan 09, 2025; 1:49pm
URL: http://nand2tetris-questions-and-answers-forum.52.s1.nabble.com/Number-of-NAND-gates-in-the-HACK-computer-tp4038281p4038282.html

I was surprised to see that the memory requires almost 10 million NAND gates (the CPU is less than 3,000). In the age of vacuum tubes, they managed to build computers with a couple of thousands, maybe 10s of thousands of vacuum tubes (and I'm not sure a nand gate would require 1 or more tubes to implement!)

Sure, the HACK computer has a lot of memory compared to those, and it's a 16 bit architecture. Still, I wonder how would they approach the implementation of the HACK computer in the early days of computers.

Also, is there any chip that can be built more efficiently directly, without entering a crazy optimization territory?