The power of Minecraft: The player has built a working virtual processor with a display in his world
Imagine a computer game in which there is a virtual world. You could move there as you please, explore everything, use tools and build whatever you can think of. For example, a steampunk version of an 8-bit 1 Hz processor with 256 bytes of RAM, which can be virtually connected to an equally virtual display 32 by 32 pixels. This is exactly what happened at Minecraft.
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Chungus 2 minecraft processor with display and Snake game. Credit: Yaoutube / Sammyuri.
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Today’s computer chips are so tiny and complex that we sometimes forget about the real physical processes that make them work. And these processes can be successfully imitated in virtual worlds, such as the popular and extremely inspiring world of Minecraft. Recently, the largest and most complex Chungus 2 processor has been created there, which is virtual but works as if it were made of “flesh and bones”.
In Minecraft it is possible to come across negatives. Credit: Mojang / Wikimedia Commons.
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The creator of the minecraft processor is a player known as “Sammyuri”. According to him, he spent seven months building a Chungus 2 (Computation Humongous Unconventional Number and Graphics Unit) processor playing in the world of Minecraft. He used materials and tools familiar from Minecraft, so in theory anyone familiar with this remarkable game could do that.
This is not the first time someone has created a virtual processor in Minecraft. There are a number of similar projects. But Chungus 2 seems to be the largest and most complex. It simulates an 8-bit processor with a frequency of 1 Hz and 256 bytes of RAM. Like previous, more modest virtual processors in Minecraft, Chungus 2 uses the physics of the game engine to mimic the structure of a real processor on a macroscopic scale. If each “block” in Minecraft corresponds to 1 meter of our world, then Chungus 2 is about the size of a skyscraper or ocean liner.
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Chungus 2 a Tetris. Kredit: Youtube/Sammyuri.
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Minecraft Chungus 2 can be “connected” to an equally virtual display measuring 32 by 32 pixels, as well as to a “controller” that a human Minecraft player manipulates by jumping on virtual “buttons”. This allows you to play classic retro 2D games such as Tetris or Snake with the Chungus 2 processor or run it as a graphics calculator. These programs are created in the form of virtual “plug-ins” that would match the size of a freight train in our world. A Minecraft player can virtually “plug” them into the Chungus 2 processor and play.
This project is an amazing practical application of computer science. It obviously has considerable educational and popularizing value and literally embodies the basic principles of processor operation. According to Michael Crider from PCWorld, we will wait a few years and maybe such a powerful minecraft processor will appear that it will run all of Minecraft. And the universe may be imploding into another incomprehensible singularity at that moment.
Video: CHUNGUS 2 – A very powerful 1Hz Minecraft CPU
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