When 8 Bits is Overkill: Making Blinkenlights with a 1-bit CPU
girst (Tobi)
39th Chaos Communication Congress (39C3): Power Cycles · Day 3 · Saal Fuse
In an era dominated by multi-core processors, gigabytes of RAM, and cloud-native applications, Tobi (girst), a network engineer by profession, presented a captivating journey into the extreme minimalism of computing at 39C3. His talk, "When 8 Bits is Overkill: Making Blinkenlights with a 1-bit CPU," detailed his ambitious personal project: building a functional system around the **Motorola 14500**, a **1-bit Central Processing Unit (CPU)** released in 1977. Far from a mere historical curiosity, Tobi’s endeavor involved constructing a 16x16 LED matrix to run Conway's Game of Life, pushing the boundaries of what's possible with severely constrained hardware.