from Hacker News

How computers work, from the atom up (2011)

by gautamsomani on 3/29/24, 6:54 PM with 2 comments

• by MichaelZuo on 3/30/24, 1:23 AM

  The answer doesn’t actually lay out how electricity flowing through a bunch of NAND gates physically causes the computer/CPU to begin booting up.

  There’s always a step missing in these types of answers,

  step n: electricity begins to flow through gates

  step n+1: ???

  step n+2: Microcode execution begins

  Presumably in step n+1 something happens to the chip, more than just heating it up, that causes a regular pattern which we would call the very first step of microcode booting up.