Building a computer is one thing. Designing a computer from scratch is another. Doing both of those things in the confines of Microsoft's smash-hit sandbox game Minecraft is, I want to say, absurd? The folly of man? An affront to God? Yet here we are, and the Minecraft computer is nearly complete.
Ryan Boulds is a recent computer science graduate who began building this computer within Minecraft last year. I caught up with him last year to discuss the project, which was at the time just taking shape. Boulds told me then that he began the project 'for the fun of it', though was taken aback by the explosion of interest and excitement when he posted the unfinished computer to TikTok.
@ryan_boulds ♬ Danger - SoundAudio
"My Minecraft Redstone computer is now in the final stages of construction!" Boulds proclaims in his latest video. In which, a mass of redstone circuits and blocks is displayed hovering over the world below like an alien spacecraft. The villagers surely must praise it as a God.
This computer is designed to be programmable and run Boulds' assembly code. It will be able to run a heap of important functions required of a processing unit—add, subtract, multiply, divide, modulo, bitshift left, bitshift right, rotate right, and rotate left. It has 16 32-bit registers and will be able to display converted numbers on a screen crafted out of blocks in much the same way as the rest.
Some of the first code to run on this computer? The Fibonacci Sequence—each number is the sum of the preceding two numbers.
@ryan_boulds ♬ Touch (2021 Epilogue) [feat. Paul Williams] - Daft Punk & Paul Williams
The computer now includes 2 kB of RAM, which is enough to run basic programs but, sadly, as Boulds notes, not enough to run Doom.
"Currently, it can run machine code when entered line by line, but I hope one day I will be able to have it run everything pre-programmed automatically," Boulds notes. Essentially this would mean a way to store and load programs, which was on Boulds' things to-do list last year, too. A lot else on that list has been already ticked off, including the system RAM.
What's impressive is that this is running on 'vanilla' redstone circuitry. While Boulds does use some mods to prevent his own PC from having a complete meltdown with the sheer scale of the computer in Minecraft and to keep it mostly loaded in at any one time to function, it would theoretically work in vanilla Minecraft—the blocks are all your standard fare.
So, using the same blocks as my treetop base or many mud huts, Boulds has created a computer running inside a simulated game world running on a computer.
He's not placing every block by hand, of course, more designing repeatable fixed function circuits and then copying and pasting those into the computer. The overall symmetrical construction was by design, too, as it wasn't this way originally. As Boulds told me: "Thank goodness World Edit has a move command."
If you want to keep an eye on this project, head over to Boulds' TikTok account. Boulds aims to explain some of the fundamental concepts and designs used in the overall computer, such as how the RAM is built and how to make specific circuits.
"This remains a fun hobby of mine rather than a job," Boulds told me last year. "But with that said, I do enjoy making content that has some educational merit showing math, electrical engineering, and computer science concepts in a fun and engaging way with short videos."
