/dev/zero has infinite electrons and /dev/null has an infinite appetite for them

http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/pipelogic/index.php

by sgt • 14 years ago

250 23 14 years ago

sgt2• 14 years ago

This is a typical Linus Akesson project. Highly eccentric, potentially useless for practical applications, and extremely intelligent. I certainly approve.

exDM69• 14 years ago

If someone is not familiar with the works of Mr. Åkesson, I suggest you check out his YouTube videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/lftkryo/videos

He likes playing Chiptune songs with eccentric DIY instruments.

sgt2• 14 years ago

My bad - Åkesson, not Akesson! I have one in my iTunes that sounds like regular piano music at first, then these chiptune sounds sneak in and strangely enough it all sounds harmonic and rather pleasant to listen to.

kolektiv• 14 years ago

I can't help feeling that /dev/zero produces neutrons rather than electrons.

archangel_one• 14 years ago

I see your point, but something producing a stream of neutrons sounds a bit like a self-sustaining nuclear reaction which might be tricky to manage as a device node :)

MidwestMuster• 14 years ago

"If there is a NAND, people will build computers. I've seen that effect with Minecraft. But using unix pipes is just awesome, too :D" (first comment from post)

raverbashing2• 14 years ago

Yes, it's true, you can build a whole computer from NAND gates

Or NOR gates like this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer#Design

cdcarter• 14 years ago

TECS (http://www1.idc.ac.il/tecs/) is a great book that leads you through that entire process, too!

gradschool• 14 years ago

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that you need NAND gates and a clock? Identifying a minimal set of primitive components necessary to implement a self-timed computer would be a more interesting problem.

MasterScrat• 14 years ago

Isn't an FPGA basically a bunch of NAND or NOR gates whose connections can be arranged as necessary?

warmwaffles• 14 years ago

I laughed when I read the title, this was a fun read

tlrobinson• 14 years ago

Who needs VHDL when you have sh?

tectonic• 14 years ago

"So there it is. We've been able to construct gates and flip flops using nothing but UNIX pipes and our small MOSFET tool. We may now proceed to design any digital circuits we want: Processors, memories, entire computers... The world is ours to conquer!

As long as we don't run out of PIDs."

caf• 14 years ago

...or memory. Each logical zero is taking up 64k of kernel memory.

wwkeyboard• 14 years ago

This reminds me of a problem we used to debate in college; on a perfectly efficient machine, would `cat /dev/random > /dev/null` violate the second law of thermodynamics?

garethadams• 14 years ago

If you're violating the laws of physics in your assumption ("on a perfectly efficient machine") you can't expect them to hold for your hypothesis.

dbbolton• 14 years ago

Tangential question: why does /dev/null have an md5sum but /dev/zero doesn't?

micaeked• 14 years ago

i'm guessing because /dev/zero never stops

/dev/zero has infinite electrons and /dev/null has an infinite appetite for them

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