The Internet is a place where we can find truly strange hardware projects, and even cases that deal with hardware, without directly dealing with it, like the paper calculator or the virtual processor to build from your browser, things we have seen in the past. Also, if you search well, straight from Google Sites, we can find a paper-made processor, a project that is already a few years old but, unlike real processors, it does not become obsolete!
And no, don't think of a paper chip installed on a socket, but rather a sheet of paper with all the commands, functions and addresses printed, which, if used in a certain way, can imitate the functioning of a processor in a didactic and quite curious way.
An educational tool
Now, what could be interesting about learning how a processor works? To tell the truth, the only thing that matters to the average user is how well it works and how much it costs (among other factors), but those who are studying how to design hardware or are on some pilgrimage to the mythical assembly language tend to deal with these things very frequently. Of course, any reproduction of a processor's functionality is quite crude.
The processor has on paper its functions, registers and states, as well as addresses that simulate RAM memory, and its own buses. The user must jump between addresses and data in the same way they would use an abacus. It is a two-bit processor, but the concept is even compatible with the overflow condition.
To use it, in addition to printing the processor sheet, you need a little collage to cut out the address bus and the data bus. If you need a more linear example, on the page there is a kind of tutorial with well-defined images on how to go through each of the processor's states step by step.
Once again, one might question the general usefulness behind projects like this, but the same could be said of a drawing of an atom, and it doesn't stop being less interesting because of how crude a drawing is or how simple its imitation is. It is clear that as humans, no matter how smart we are, we are slow compared to a computer.
What this user has represented on paper happens at a speed impossible for us to perceive, at least by natural means. It never hurts to see things from a slightly simpler perspective, even if it just means drawing something on a piece of paper and using a pair of scissors. As I said, an excellent educational tool to REALLY learn how a processor works, at a speed suitable for humans. Go process!
