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NaN Gates and Flip FLOPS

suckerpinch · demo · Watch on YouTube

Computer architecture & CPUsSatire & parody

What it is

Tom Murphy (suckerpinch) presents a deliberately trollish computer architecture built on IEEE-754 floating point, using NaN and infinity to define logic gates. He builds working hardware around the idea.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN fans hold it up as a favorite among his videos and an example of gloriously bonkers technical art, and cite it in floating-point discussions.

  • 7 people recommended it
  • 7 different months
  • 3 strong recommendations
  • first 2020, last 2025

What HN commenters said

  1. “My favorite is "NaN Gates and Flip FLOPS”

    Reinvents computing with IEEE754 floats, with working hardware

    kibwen, 2021-04 · Strong recommendation · in “Uppestcase and Lowestcase Letters”

  2. “Suckerpinch barely ever releases a video, but when he does they are great.”

    Favorite video from a rare-but-great creator

    bakuninsbart, 2023-03 · Strong recommendation · in “Ask HN: What are some of the most interesting YouTube channels to follow?”

  3. “That is not only impossibly bonkers on just about every level”

    Extreme, bonkers, useless-by-design technical art

    anyfoo, 2023-01 · Recommendation · in “ABC: A C compiler for printable x86”

  4. “Tom Murphy has you covered with: the NaN Gate.”

    Hardware accelerator built on NaN gates

    btown, 2023-01 · Recommendation · in “Supporting half-precision floats is really annoying”

  5. “Reminds me of this wonderful video”

    Builds computation using only NaN and infinity

    Recursing, 2023-10 · Recommendation · in “Subtraction Is Functionally Complete”

  6. “you might get a kick out of some of his videos”

    Example of tom7's fun videos

    retsibsi, 2023-12 · Recommendation · in “Gaussian Explosion”

  7. “Tom7 has a good video about this”

    Explores how float operators lack arithmetic properties

    MathMonkeyMan, 2025-06 · Recommendation · in “Most ints are not floats”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: ieee-754, nan, logic gates, tom7, hardware, humor

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