A lot of folks trying to show off with small amounts of hardware use 8-bitters. It’s one of smallest types of architectures that many early computers used. However, there’s an even more limited architecture, 4-bit MCU’s, that’s still actually sold in the market for use in things like Gillette razors. They had a lot of uses before per Wikipedia. I’d love to see some demoscene competitions for 4-bit since I can’t even guess what they might be able to do with it.
The MARC was programmed in Forth, too. So, I submitted the guide in case people wanted to see what 4-bit programming looked like. It’s not the lower-limit, though: Motorola made a 1-bit MCU for PLC-style, control applications. Here’s the programmer’s guide. Here’s a derivative with a video of it doing basic tasks on a board. So, there’s your lower limits if wanting the simplest or most-constraining MCU. I mean, there’s also No Instruction Set Computing (NISC) where you just get primitives like ALU’s but have to synthesize your own ISA. I’m drawing the line on MCU’s since that’s still software programming. ;)
A lot of folks trying to show off with small amounts of hardware use 8-bitters. It’s one of smallest types of architectures that many early computers used. However, there’s an even more limited architecture, 4-bit MCU’s, that’s still actually sold in the market for use in things like Gillette razors. They had a lot of uses before per Wikipedia. I’d love to see some demoscene competitions for 4-bit since I can’t even guess what they might be able to do with it.
The MARC was programmed in Forth, too. So, I submitted the guide in case people wanted to see what 4-bit programming looked like. It’s not the lower-limit, though: Motorola made a 1-bit MCU for PLC-style, control applications. Here’s the programmer’s guide. Here’s a derivative with a video of it doing basic tasks on a board. So, there’s your lower limits if wanting the simplest or most-constraining MCU. I mean, there’s also No Instruction Set Computing (NISC) where you just get primitives like ALU’s but have to synthesize your own ISA. I’m drawing the line on MCU’s since that’s still software programming. ;)