October 31, 2025
Trick-or-Compute
Fungus: The Befunge CPU(2015)
A Halloween-ready chip for a ‘nightmare’ language, and commenters howl
TLDR: A resurrected “Fungus” concept proposes a custom chip for the weird, two‑dimensional Befunge language. Commenters celebrated the spooky timing, split between calling it artsy genius and gloriously useless, with nostalgic nods to oddball machines and a flood of Halloween jokes fueling the fun.
The retro blog Bedroomlan resurfaced “Fungus,” a delightfully unhinged idea: a custom chip built to run Befunge, a puzzle-like, two‑dimensional programming language designed to be a pain to compile. Cue the comments: the top vibe is pure Halloween, with users cheering the spooky timing and the paper’s own campy line about Cthulhu in a bikini. The biggest split? Art vs. utility. Esoteric‑language fans swooned, calling it “performance art you can solder,” while pragmatic devs rolled their eyes: building hardware for a prank language is “gloriously useless,” they scoffed. Hardware nostalgics chimed in with throwbacks to Lisp and Java machines, arguing that weird chips push ideas forward even if they never ship.
The drama spiked over whether a microcoded, 18‑bit, two‑dimensional “extreme RISC” chip is genius or cosplay. One camp says a chip that interprets Befunge directly is like making a vinyl player for logic puzzles—niche, but irresistibly cool. The other camp jokes it’s just an excuse to post Cthulhu memes and call it research. Humor ruled: “nightmare CPU” puns, pumpkin emoji chains, and “do it for the vibes” became the refrain. Love it or roast it, Fungus lit up the comments like a jack‑o’-lantern, proving the internet still has a soft spot for gloriously bizarre ideas.
Key Points
- •Fungus is a prototype hardware specification: a microcoded, 18-bit, two-dimensional extreme RISC CPU designed to interpret Funge languages at the hardware level.
- •The Funge language family (including Befunge and Unefunge) is n-dimensional, stack-based, Turing-complete, and deliberately hard to compile.
- •Compilation challenges arise from Funge’s self-modifying behavior and multi-directional program counter, leading many compilers to function as interpreters.
- •Befunge was invented in 1993 by Chris Pressey; at least two compilers for Befunge exist despite its difficulties.
- •The article provides a downloadable PDF (fungus.pdf, 165 KB) detailing the Fungus architecture and situates it among language-specific machines like Lisp and Java processors.