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How is it possible to turn 0,1 machine language data into 0v or 5v for transistor inputs?

Now I'm learning how a software connect to a hardware. I understand a CPU use logic circuits. 　　Logic circuits also use transistors. I think transistors can get only 0V or 5V as a input.

No idea of how 0,1 machine language change into 0V or 5V's input in transistor.

Takeshi
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  • What do you think 0 and 1 are? Just voltages (e.g., 0 is 0-0.2V and 1 is 0.8-1.2V). Now, if you want your logic pin to drive a transistor, it's not that straightforward - see, for example, how complex is a GPIO pad macro in the Sky120 PDK: https://github.com/google/skywater-pdk-libs-sky130_fd_io/blob/01b18699b4102d8e54ad1406b3991ecb652e5aee/cells/top_gpiov2/sky130_fd_io__top_gpiov2.svg- yes, it's a single GPIO pad circuitry, on an old tech node. Modern GPIOs are even more complex than this. – SK-logic Aug 19 '23 at 11:17
  • Hi, Thank you for commenting. I understand that is not straightforward. I want to know how to change software into hardware. I know about software instruction set architecture and physical micro architecture. But no idea of how to map them. – Takeshi Aug 30 '23 at 09:09
  • The best way to understand it is to play with minimalist compute architectures. One good example of such is http://mynor.org/my4th - the entire ALU is a single discrete chip NOR gate, and the whole CPU is just a state machine inside a ROM chip. Once you understand how logic level signals interact with transistor gates in discrete electronics, you can dig deeper into how it's done in ASICs (and this is where things are getting extremely complicated, see my previous answer). – SK-logic Aug 30 '23 at 09:47
  • Thank you. I already read nand2tetris. I also made CPU using a bread borad. But no idea of how I can work my software program on my self made CPU and ROM not using FPGA and so on. – Takeshi Aug 30 '23 at 09:58
  • Then you're half way there already! Then the hard part is understanding how different types of transistors work, what are the voltage and current requirements of the transistor gates of various types. You need to learn how charge pumps work, what is the difference between low side and high side gate driving, etc. For me, personally, everything clicked together only after I designed a BLDC motor controller board, until then, I realise, I had a lot of misconceptions about gate driving. – SK-logic Aug 30 '23 at 11:45
  • I mean what parts or functions change machine lang 0,1 into physical electronic signal. I understand MOSFET, but no idea of those. – Takeshi Aug 30 '23 at 13:23
  • Take a look at that MyNOR schematics, how an output of the accumulator register is driving the I/O port. – SK-logic Aug 30 '23 at 14:42
  • I will check it out. Thank you for your kindness. – Takeshi Aug 31 '23 at 12:17

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