Conway's Game of Life in RISC-V Assembly

This project implements Conway's Game of Life on an 8x8 grid, written in RISC-V assembly. The simulation runs in a terminal emulator that supports VT100 escape codes, animating the evolution of the grid in real time.

Features

• 8x8 grid with a glider pattern as the initial state
• True Conway's Game of Life rules (birth, survival, death)
• Uses VT100 escape codes to animate the grid in-place
• Adjustable delay for animation speed
• No dependencies beyond a RISC-V simulator (e.g., spike, QEMU)

Files

• conway.S — Main source file with the Game of Life logic and animation loop
• Makefile — Build and run targets for your RISC-V toolchain

How It Works

• The program prints an intro and saves the cursor position.
• It repeatedly restores the cursor, prints the current grid, waits, computes the next generation, and repeats.
• The grid is updated in-place using a temporary buffer for the next generation.
• The animation continues indefinitely.

Usage

The Makefile expects you to tell it which assembly file to build via FILE=<source.s>.

1. Build (example uses the main program):

   make FILE=conway.S

2. Run with spike:

   make run FILE=conway.S

3. View a disassembly in less:

   make dump FILE=conway.S

4. Clean generated artifacts for that file:

   make clean FILE=conway.S

Swap conway.S for any other .s/.S file you want to assemble (e.g., grid.s, invert.s). Override the toolchain prefix if needed, e.g. make RISCV_PREFIX=riscv64-linux-gnu FILE=conway.S.

Customization

• Initial Pattern: Edit the grid in the .data section of conway.S.
• Animation Speed: Change the DELAY_CYCLES constant in conway.S.

Requirements

• RISC-V toolchain (assembler, linker, and simulator)
• Terminal emulator with VT100 support (for cursor movement)

License

MIT License. See LICENSE file if present.

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Inspired by classic cellular automata and low-level programming fun!