Modern Computers

I admit that we have got rid of the pigeons but the push rods are still there! In this case the push rods are digital signals that come out of the CPU’s electronics – to find out exactly how it works and some fascinating facts like why a Megabyte is exactly 1,048,576 bytes see How Memory Works.

Modern memory - no push rods and certainly no pigeons

Make your own memory

There is a well-known demonstration of how computer memory works that isn’t as well known today as it used to be. It is an excellent demonstration and it’s fun so find yourself sixteen postcards or similar, a hole punch, a pair of scissors and some knitting needles..

Take your set of postcards and punch four holes in a row close to the top edge of each one. The holes have to line up so you can see through them all when you make a stack of the cards. If you are strong enough and have a good enough punch the easiest way of doing this is to punch all sixteen in one go. Next you have to number each card in binary writing the bits under each hole.

Take a pair of scissors and turn any hole with a zero below it into a U shaped slot (see the diagrams for clarification).

First punch holes in all 16 cards (only four shown)

Number the cards in binary and make each zero hole into a slot.

When you put the pack of cards back together you have a working computer memory.

If you don’t believe me I will now tell you how to automatically access a location. Shuffle the cards, because the selection process doesn’t depend on them being in any particular order.

Suppose you want the card corresponding to address 1010.

First take a pair of knitting needles and place them in the first and third holes counting from the right - i.e. the holes corresponding to the positions you want a zero in. 

Now lift up the needles together and the cards left behind have to have zeros i.e. slots in both of those positions. 

That is the cards that are left behind all have addresses like x0x0 where x is zero or one. 

With this subset of cards repeat the procedure but now place a single needle in the fourth position from the right and lift out a subset of cards. These now correspond to the address 10x0 and so finally you can put the needle through the second position from the left and lift out the only card with the address 1010.

This is a completely general procedure and any card that you are looking for can be found in the same way. First use multiple needles to pull out cards with the required zeros and then use a single needle to reduce the deck to the cards with the required ones. 

There is also a very simple procedure that can be used to put a shuffled deck of binary cards back into order - can you work out what it is?

Your next project is to automate this procedure using Lego or Meccano and build something that works as fast as a multicore processor!

The memory principle is that you store data at an address for later retrieval and presenting the address to the mechanism automatically retrieves the correct data. In other words the address physically selects the data returned it isn't just a passive label. 

Related Articles

How Memory Works

Cache Memory 

CPU

Charles Babbage

Virtual Memory

Flash Memory - Changing Storage

CPU

Processor Design - RISC,CISC & ROPS

Spintronics

• Mike James is the author of Programmer's Python: Everything is an Object published by I/O Press as part of the  I Programmer Library. With the subtitle "Something Completely Different" this is for those who want to understand the deeper logic in the approach that Python 3 takes to classes and objects. His latest book is The Programmer’s Guide To Theory: Great ideas explained.

What Programmers Know

Contents

1. The Computer - What's The Big Idea?*
2. The Memory Principle - Computer Memory and Pigeonholes*
3. Principles of Execution - The CPU
4. Assemblers and assembly language*
5. The Essence Of Programming
6. Variables - Scope, Lifetime And More*
7. Binary Arithmetic
8. Hexadecimal*
9. Binary - Negative Numbers*
10. Floating Point Numbers*
11. Inside the Computer - Addressing
12. The Mod Function
13. Recursion
14. The Lost Art Of The Storage Mapping Function *
15. Hashing - The Greatest Idea In Programming
16. Advanced Hashing
17. XOR - The Magic Swap*
18. Programmer's Introduction to XML
19. From Data To Objects*
20. What Exactly Is A First Class Function - And Why You Should Care*
21. Stacks And Trees*
22. The LIFO Stack - A Gentle Guide*
23. Data Structures - Trees
24. Inside Random Numbers
25. The Monte Carlo Method
26. Cache Memory And The Caching Principle
27. Data Compression The Dictionary Way
28. Dates Are Difficult*
29. Sequential Storage*
30. Magic of Merging*
31. Power of Operators
32. The Heart Of A Compiler*
33. The Fundamentals of Pointers
34. Functional And Dysfunctional Programming*

* Recently revised

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