nesformer
AI
model weights emulation
SHOW HN2026
How HN took it
8 positive, 18 neutral or asking, 2 mixed, 23 critical, out of 51 comments about the project. Thread score -0.18.
Idea: 7 for, 10 againstPerformance: 0 for, 8 againstExecution: 1 for, 1 againstDocs: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Impressive demonstration of how LLMs can compute
From 2 comments
Woowww this is cool, not trained is even cooler--maybe I'm probably a bit naive, but to me it demonstrates an understanding of how an LLM can compute
munro on HNOmg what is this sorcery?!
creposukre on HN
Clever builds on Qwenputer
From 1 comment
> nesformer builds on Qwenputer by Divyansh Agrawal, which compiled a CHIP-8 and then a RISC-V CPU into Qwen3.5-4B. It reuses Qwenputer's compiler and its central trick: the…
nico on HN
Objections
Runs far slower than the real console
From 1 comment
>Overall, nesformer runs 150–290× slower than the real console. I like these kinds of projects because it helps to show the massive compute requirement between LLMs and ordinary…
pbohun on HN
Unclear what the point is since logic circuits can be reduced to weights
From 1 comment
I guess I don't understand the point of this. Of course a set of digital logic circuits can be reduced to a set of weights. Am I missing something?
WoodenChair on HN
Requests
Explain the input and output in plain terms
From 1 comment
Can someone give a TL;DR ? What's the input to the model? What's the output?
mlmonkey on HN
Test with non-greedy sampling
From 1 comment
It mentions a greedy decoder in the readme, I'm curious what would happen if you run it stochastically with T>0. Vibe NES? Or does it just crash.
lachlan_gray on HN
Questions
How do they know it works across all inputs?
From 1 comment
How do they know it's "working"? Did they test every possible input/output combination?
amelius on HN
Alternatives named
Qwenputer, the CHIP-8 and RISC-V predecessor
From 1 comment
> nesformer builds on Qwenputer by Divyansh Agrawal, which compiled a CHIP-8 and then a RISC-V CPU into Qwen3.5-4B. It reuses Qwenputer's compiler and its central trick: the…
nico on HN