6.004 is one of the four core Course 6 (EECS) classes at MIT. For over a decade, ending in about 1996-1997, students built a simple 8 bit computer out of discrete integrated circuits as a required part of the class. This computer had no microprocessor - you built the processor. The machine was used to emulate a more complex 32 bit processor, called Beta, in software.
At the end of the term students could participate in an optional design contest, the goal being to modify your machine to run faster than all the others. Most students simply souped up their machine so that it emulated Beta faster. But in the fall of 1996, Scott, Colin, Eric and I built a straight hardware implementation of Beta, which we called the VHS. No one else in the history of 6.004 had ever successfully built a 32 bit machine. We did, and our machine ran at least 50 times faster than our nearest competitor!
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