Fungus: the Befunge CPU (2015)

Posted2 months agoActive2 months ago

onestay42

18 points

3 comments

bedroomlan.orgTechstory

calmpositive

Debate

10/100

BefungeCPU DesignFpga

Key topics

Befunge

CPU Design

Fpga

The 'Fungus' project implements a Befunge CPU on an FPGA, showcasing an unconventional CPU design, with commenters appreciating its novelty and discussing potential applications.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Light discussion

First comment

58m

Peak period

5-6h

Avg / period

1.5

Key moments

01Story posted
Oct 31, 2025 at 9:38 PM EDT
2 months ago
Step 01
02First comment
Oct 31, 2025 at 10:36 PM EDT
58m after posting
Step 02
03Peak activity
2 comments in 5-6h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03
04Latest activity
Nov 1, 2025 at 3:21 AM EDT
2 months ago
Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (3 comments)

Showing 3 comments

andrewflnr

2 months ago

1 reply

I can only assume this is here tonight in honor of Halloween. If that's the case, well done, OP.

lukan

2 months ago

It definitely sounds spooky.

"The Funge family is Turing-Complete, yet was designed to be ‘a nightmare to compile’."

"Fungus is a microcoded, 18-bit, two-dimensional extreme RISC machine extremely suited to the interpretation of Funge at the hardware level. The author visualises the implementation of Funge compilers to generate Fungus-native code. The reader to whom the concept of Cthulhu in a bikini sounds acceptable may additionally visualise optimisingFunge compilers for Fungus."

ofalkaed

2 months ago

Back around 2015 when this first came out I started drawing up plans for a befunge computer, it seemed like a good use for the massive amount of CMOS and TTL that had fallen into my lap around the same time. It was a fun idea but would have been a fairly useless computer and I could not justify the time or expense of taking it past paper. I implemented most of the Funge-98 spec, had to skip fingerprints and put a limit on the size of Funge space as well as on the maximum number of IPs, think I got everything else. Somewhere in a box in the garage I probably still have the notebook with all those schematics.

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ID: 45778566Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 2:33:22 PM

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