How do processing units (chips) work one level deeper than the simple input/processing/output flow?
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The chip has an instruction set built in, which is every operation it’s capable of carrying out. It’s really basic stuff like “copy the value in this memory location to that memory location” or “add the values in these two registers together.”
When you program a computer, you’re sending your (mostly human-readable) program through a process that translates it to the instructions the chip can understand.
And at the lowest possible level, the processor is mostly transistor components that can either be “high” or “low” voltage, and can have that voltage set by other voltages. Hooking lots and lots of those together just right allows you to create logical structures like NAND.
NAND means “not and,” which is a logic operation that means “I have two inputs, and each can be high or low voltage. I have one output that can also be high or low voltage. If both of my inputs are high voltage, I will output low voltage. If either or both of my inputs is low, I’ll output high.”
There are other operations for AND, OR, NOT, and a few others. By chaining these together just right, you can do things like add two numbers. Add a clock to keep everything synchronized, and you can build up some pretty complex structures.
If you want to be challenged by a series of puzzles that will teach you to build a processor from the ground up, check out [https://nandgame.com/](https://nandgame.com/).
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