8 bit Harvard Computer

An 8 bit Virtual CPU in C that executes a custom bytecode instruction set

🎯 Purpose & Learning Goals

I built this mini project to put what i learned in computer architecture to use and to practise low level programming in C.

✨ Features

• Custom assembler that converts simple assembly mnemonics to machine code
• 8 bit Harvard architecture with separate program and data memory
• Pipelined execution with fetch decode execute stages
• Branching with zero flag and pipeline stall handling
• Stack implementation for push and pop operations
• Register and memory visualization in terminal
• ROM dump after execution

🧰 Tech Stack

• Language: C (standard library only)
• No external frameworks or libraries
• Built and run with any standard C compiler

⚙️ Setup & Installation

1. Clone the repo: git clone https://github.com/yourusername/8-bit-harvard-computer.git
2. Compile the code: gcc main.c -o cpu
3. Run the program: ./cpu
4. Enter instructions one per line (empty line to finish) using format INSTRUCTION OPERAND eg ADD 0x01
5. Watch the CPU state update in real time