Ghanaian Student Tyrone Marhguy Constructs Computer Brain at University of Pennsylvania
Tyrone Iras Marhguy, a University of Pennsylvania student and former Achimota School alumnus, has built an eight-bit Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) from scratch, utilizing 3,488 transistors. The project took over 250 hours and involved creating the ALU with Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors (MOSFETs) to perform 19 operations.
The design was validated using over 1.2 million test vectors. Marhguy, who had no prior experience in chip design, aimed to understand computing fundamentals. The project is now moving into its next phase, focusing on optimization, Printed Circuit Board (PCB) assembly, and debugging.
Marhguy gained recognition in 2021 for winning a court case against the Government of Ghana regarding his admission to Achimota School due to his Rastafarian dreadlocks. He later completed secondary education with eight A1s in the 2023 WASSCE and received a full scholarship for Computer Engineering at Penn valued at 1.4 million USD.
