hack emulator

A nand2tetris Hack computer running in the browser.

Interactive demo ↗ jsr

Conway's Game of Life — a cellular automaton where cells live, die, or reproduce based on their neighbours.

The Hack computer is a 16-bit machine designed for the nand2tetris course. It has a CPU, ROM, RAM, a memory-mapped 512×256 monochrome screen, and a keyboard. Programs are written in Hack assembly and compiled to binary .hack files — one 16-bit instruction per line. This emulator runs those binaries directly in the browser using a high-performance CPU simulation built with @r2/hack-emulator.

// programs

  1. life.hack

    Conway's Game of Life — a cellular automaton where cells live, die, or reproduce based on their neighbours.

    ↗ source
  2. r2.hack

    Draws "R2" in big block letters on the screen by writing pixel data directly to memory-mapped I/O.

    ↗ source
  3. waves.hack

    An infinite animation that spawns random bars at the top of the screen and shifts them downward, creating a waves effect.

    ↗ source
  4. pixel.hack

    Draws a single pixel to the screen — the simplest possible graphical program.

    ↗ source