Hard Chip

Hard Chip is a 3D simulation and puzzle game in which you design a processor from scratch, starting with transistors and building up without abstraction layers or drag-and-drop logic blocks. You are new_user, trapped in a strange world where terminals are dead and machines are silent. To find out why and make your way through the machines, you build working chips one gate at a time.

Build a processor

Wire complementary transistors into NAND and NOR gates, then combine gates into components and components into circuits. Each assembly is a puzzle that calls for planning and creative problem-solving. By the end, you will have designed an 8-bit ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) by hand, from silicon principles.

Engineer for speed

Wires have length and gates have delay, so a design runs only as fast as its slowest path. Propagation delay is a consequence of the circuit you build, and you must engineer around it.