Show HN: Compile C to Not Gates

145 points67 comments6 months ago
bangaladore

Reminds me of movfuscator [1]. This can compile programs to movs and only movs.

[1] https://github.com/Battelle/movfuscator

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tromp

Am I right in deducing that this language gets its power from self-modifying code? I.e. flipping bits within addresses of the opcodes of the running program?

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tomhee

There is also a brainfuck to flipjump compiler: https://github.com/tomhea/bf2fj

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tomhee

By the way, as a challenge, try how you can program an "If" statement in Flipjump.

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pizza

Ah interesting.. wonder if you can model this with a recursively expanded algebraic expression. I've been thinking lately along similar lines about polynomials that encode pushdown automata, so this is cool to see.

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Firehawke

Wouldn't it be better to call it "compile C to Linux or BSD"?

I kid, I kid.

dingdingdang

It always amazes me that this is possible (to some extend anyway, I mean, the base layer is binary so obviously simpler higher-end CPU instructions are possible!)

Is there any potential performance win in this? What I mean is; since this general direction could, in principle if not in practise, enable the targeting of say, the 5-10 most efficient CPU instructions rather than attempting to use the whole surface area... would this potentially be a win?

eimrine

I was expecting to see a way to translate hello_world.c into an electronic schematic full of NAND elements, kind of Mealy machine.

tonetegeatinst

Looking forward to the poor security researcher who gets to reverse engineer some malware sample they compiles this into for obfuscation... Its going to be an interesting blog post.

jkrshnmenon

I wonder if someone has already made a Reverse Engineering CTF challenge for this concept.

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dlcarrier

Maxim (now owned by Analog) actually manufactures a single-instruction processor series, called MAXQ. It uses a single move instruction, with a flag for literals, and a transport triggered architecture.

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jvanderbot

Is the family of circuits using just NOT gates actually universal? Or is "flip" and "jump" secretly using a lot of other gates.

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Imustaskforhelp

hey this could actually be pretty nice if we can convert flipjump into sqlite native instructions like how it is possible for brainfuck , then you are on to something huge!

You would create although highly inefficient , after many years , maybe the first , language like those lisps where you could store data in sqlite and run it fromt there (but with C)

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Nevermnd

Did I miss something? I thought NAND was you're 'universal gate' ?

artemonster

Id appreciate more explanations from the power of combined bitflip & goto

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platz

How is a jump realized by Not Gates?

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jumploops

AND, OR, NOT - pick 2

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dang

Looks like we banned you and this domain because of the egregious vote manipulation and bogus comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34856792.

That was a long time ago, though, and the project is interesting enough, so I'm going to assume you've learned your lesson and unban you. Please stop using multiple accounts for this though!

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jpcookie

[dead]

kuringganteng

[flagged]