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Re:The 100 MHz 6502 by plandis on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @02:21PM (#28855555)
> Nothing scares me any more, and I no longer fear "magic" in software or hardware.

You sound exactly like my professor for computer architecture. “Computers are not magic!” He mentioned this at least once during every lecture and my experience was similar to yours

Re:The 100 MHz 6502 by chronolitus on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @06:04PM (#28858239)
Sufficiently expert wizards would probably go around saying "Magic is not magic!"
Re:The 100 MHz 6502 by FPGAhacker on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @04:22PM (#28857194)
It really depends on how many steps down the ladder of abstraction you go. Computers are still magic if you step down a few more rungs.
Re:The 100 MHz 6502 by pjmorris on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @07:07PM (#28858678)
Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. [0]

[0] Profiles of the Future, Arthur C. Clarke

Re:The 100 MHz 6502 by Teongot on Thursday October 14, 2021 @06:57AM (#28862682)
The corollary to that is, of course, that any technology which is distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced
Re:The 100 MHz 6502 by picture on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @05:16PM (#28857836)
Down to the physics of FETs and the underlying chemistry? How much further doe it go?
Re:The 100 MHz 6502 by Cyph0n on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @06:47PM (#28858535)
Quantum effects, particle physics, and then the unknown (for now).
Re:The 100 MHz 6502 by baq on Thursday October 14, 2021 @04:22AM (#28861750)
10, 7 and 5 nm patterning and EUV light sources are basically magic.
Re:The 100 MHz 6502 by Dylan16807 on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @07:29PM (#28858805)
I'd say the field effects on electrical flow are probably the weirdest part to look at, and they don't reach 'magic' levels.

The atoms below that are relatively straightforward, and them being made up of building blocks is fine I guess, increasingly irrelevant to the issue of a computer.

And going up everything starts to get very non-magical as you turn response curves into binary signals and then string gates together.

Re:The 100 MHz 6502 by ngcc_hk on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @08:27PM (#28859192)
Qm is still magical as you sort of use it but do not really understand it. It is so weird. And that is magically part.

Btw I read your below word as above.

Re:The 100 MHz 6502 by Dylan16807 on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @09:42PM (#28859641)
It's such a narrow sliver of quantum effects that are relevant here, though, and it's not the weird stuff.
Re:The 100 MHz 6502 by ZeikJT on Thursday October 14, 2021 @02:03PM (#28867733)
Quantum tunneling is a step into weird.
Re:The 100 MHz 6502 by Dylan16807 on Thursday October 14, 2021 @02:28PM (#28868042)
You don't need tunneling to make a transistor work.

(And for difficulty making walls too thin lest electrons leak through, you don't need to invoke tunneling to explain that.)

Re:The 100 MHz 6502 by fsckboy on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @10:34PM (#28859939)
i think amplified current flow through bipolar junction collector depletion zones are the weirdest part, and they are magic.
Re:The 100 MHz 6502 by erosenbe0 on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @11:33PM (#28860233)
Yeah for me it is the parasitic bjt/collector that forms in a fet (c.f. latch up). Also that bjts work in reverse active to some extent, despite the emitter nominally being the injector of the carriers. Weird!

Also I never understood things like slew rates, noise, gain bandwidth. Too high up the stack.

Re:The 100 MHz 6502 by dan_hawkins on Thursday October 14, 2021 @09:12AM (#28863786)
Gain bandwidth is directly related with slew rate. Slew rate is mostly an effect of capacitances (gate capacitance in FETs for example.) Noise is mostly caused by thermal effects (atoms bumping randomly.)
Re:The 100 MHz 6502 by tuatoru on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @08:33PM (#28859231)
At the third to bottom rung, all electronics are analog.
Re:The 100 MHz 6502 by Salgat on Thursday October 14, 2021 @10:34PM (#28873469)
Ironically computers are as close to magic as you can think of. It's literally a mechanical creature that you control with written spells.
Re:The 100 MHz 6502 by RhysU on Sunday October 17, 2021 @09:03AM (#28896158)
And the public raises pitchforks when one person in a castle controls too many of those mechanical creatures at once.
Re:The 100 MHz 6502 by WizardOfLight on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @07:25PM (#28858784)