Solo
Pipeline CPU Simulator
Educational CPU pipeline visualizer. Step through instructions, watch hazards, forward, and stall. Built to make classic computer-architecture lectures concrete.
The problem
Classic computer-architecture lectures about pipelined CPUs are blackboard-heavy. Students memorize stalls, hazards, and forwarding, but rarely get to watch them. When something goes wrong in an exam question, they're guessing.
What I built
A React + TypeScript pipeline visualizer. You load a short assembly program, step forward or backward, and see every stage — fetch, decode, execute, memory, writeback — light up cycle by cycle. Data hazards surface visually; forwarding paths and stalls are drawn as first-class citizens rather than hand-waved.
Highlights
- Cycle-accurate stepping — forward, backward, jump-to-cycle; no surprises.
- Hazard detection + forwarding — visualized directly on the pipeline diagram.
- Declarative instruction set — easy to extend with new instructions without rewriting the simulator.
What I learned
Teaching a thing is the only way to find the holes in your own understanding. Building this made me read the textbook three more times than the course asked me to — and every time I added a feature, I caught an error in my earlier mental model.