Education · In development
CSA-101 — Silicon Arc: 6502 from NAND
CSA-101 is being rebuilt as the academy's 6502 silicon arc: build a working 6502 CPU from NAND gates in HDL and synthesize it onto a Tang Primer 25K FPGA. Eight weeks, NAND to running silicon, finishing with a hand-assembled program executing through UART on a board you brought up yourself. It pairs with CSA-102 (the toolchain arc) to take you from gates to a high-level language running on the 6502 you built.
This course is not open for enrollment yet
We are building it now. If you want the best on-ramp while you wait, start with SPK-101 (Sparking Curiosity), the no-prerequisite gateway that gives you the 6502 vocabulary CSA-101 builds on.
Looking for the 32-bit course?
The RV32I-Lite course that was previously numbered CSA-101 is now CSA-110 (Fundamentals of Computing Systems). It is fully built and the academy's flagship hardware-FPGA capstone. CSA-101 (6502) and CSA-110 (RV32I-Lite) are sister tracks: take either or both.