OCTAII
Workshop series and live build — an 8-bit CPU from logic gates
Knurdz · University of Moratuwa community
OCTAII was a Knurdz workshop and live-build program held across August and September 2025. Sessions walked participants from basic logic gates through registers, binary decoders, arithmetic blocks, and the control paths that tie them together — culminating in a collaborative build of an 8-bit CPU. The series mixed classroom teaching with bench time so theory mapped directly to breadboards and wire.
What to Expect
- ▸Logic gates, truth tables, and combinational building blocks
- ▸Registers, latches, and clocked storage
- ▸Binary decoders and multiplexing for control and datapath wiring
- ▸ALU-style arithmetic and glue logic toward a full 8-bit datapath
- ▸Live build sessions assembling and testing the CPU on the bench
Program Roadmap
Foundations — logic gates
August 2025
Introduced Boolean logic, gate-level primitives, and how simple combinational circuits combine into useful building blocks on the breadboard.
Storage and decoding
Early September 2025
Workshops on registers and binary decoders — how the machine remembers state and how instruction or control patterns select the right datapath.
Datapath components
September 2025
Built and integrated arithmetic, bus wiring, and supporting glue logic toward a coherent 8-bit datapath students could trace signal by signal.
Live CPU build
September 2025
Collaborative live-build sessions to wire, debug, and bring up the 8-bit CPU as a capstone to the workshop series.
Organized By
OCTAII was organized and delivered by Knurdz as a community hardware and digital-logic program for undergraduates interested in computer architecture from first principles.
- Knurdz
Status
The September 2025 workshop and live-build cycle is complete. Photos from the program are in the gallery below.
Event Gallery
Moments from OCTAII