This Man Is Building a 10-Metre-Wide Computer Processor Because Dreams Are Real

Software and digital electronics engineer James Newman wanted to demystify computer processors. So he decided to make a gigantic 16-bit "mega-processor" to make visible the hardware that's hidden inside dinky microprocessors. The machine is currently two metres tall and 10 metres long.

The BBC reported on Newman's giant efforts, and we reached out to find out what drove him to take on such a mammoth task.

"The best way to understand how something works is to make something. Part of the idea behind this is to show how the computer works," Newman told me over the phone.

"Most of my work deals with software and digital electronics, but I'd been wanting to teach myself about transistors for a while. So I decided to get a little transistor a few years back and play with it," he said.

What initially started out as a small pet project morphed into an epic undertaking, which has now entered its third year. Newman's 16-bit mega-processor, which is housed in his bungalow in Cambridge in the UK, is made of 14,000 individual transistors and 3,500 LED lights. "I'm single so I can take up the whole house with the project," said Newman.

But building a giant processor is no easy feat. Newman explained that his day job required few practical lab skills, and admitted he had to "smarten the game" and get to grips with some serious soldering and drilling.

To make his processor, Newman took all the little transistors and put them on a circuit board—each of which performs a different function. Next up, he wired all the boards together. "I was trying to get a balance between something that I could build, something that allowed you to see what was going on, and something which connected together," he said.

The arduous process of constructing his giant computer meant that Newman learned everything through trial and error. He admitted picking up and putting down the project for the first year, until he finally found a concrete direction that he wanted to pursue in the second year.

"I had a room filled with failed experiments," he said, "but it was about two years ago that I set about doing things in a more determined manner."

So far, Newman has spent close to £20,000 ($31,000) on his project. He didn't expect costs to add up this much at the start. "I thought it would be a few thousand, but it's probably started to approach £20,000 now, which is quite a lot of money for a silly thing like this," he said. "But it's my main hobby and I don't buy expensive cars or anything."

Newman said that he's ready for a "big push" to complete his computer by the end of the summer in 2015. "When I've built it, I'd like to play with it and try and put some programs on it," he said, citing old-school games such as Tetris, Noughts and Crosses and Pong as options.

While researchers world over are trying to make the tiniest and fastest computer processors, Newman is content to go the other way. When I asked him how fast his mega-processor would run, he answered that it would be "quite slow."

"The fastest speed it will go at will be about 20 kilohertz," explained Newman. The speed of an average desktop computer is around 2.5 GHz. He said, however, that part of the beauty of the mega processor was its ability to go as slowly as he wanted it to. "I could run an instruction every ten seconds so you can actually see how the logic is changing as it runs," said Newman, stressing he wanted to make "the internal workings of a computer visible."

Ultimately, Newman said it would be great if an educational institute or a museum would take in the giant processor, as otherwise he'd just have to dismantle the whole thing and put it in storage.

"It would allow youngsters at school to see what's actually going on inside the little black chips [from normal computers], and give them an insight into what's going on in the stuff we use," he said. In reality, Newman suspects his giant contraption might actually be too large for such uses, but hopes that it might inspire similar kinds of DIY hardware hacking projects.

Newman said that as his friends were all from a similar background and trade, they were pretty supportive of his plans to build a giant processor. "They got quite excited by the idea, but they also think it's barmy," he said. "They're expecting it to look quite beautiful—they may be disappointed, but that's part of what i'm trying to achieve. They can see the attraction of trying to see what's going on inside these devices."