From ASCII to ASIC: Porting donut.c to a tiny slice of silicon

[ Update 12/19/2025 : I got the chip, and it works! Here is a writeup of my other designs on this chip, as well as a picture of it in action] For many years after coming up with donut.c , I wondered in the back of my mind if it could be simplified somehow, like maybe there was a way to raytrace a donut with a small chunk of code. In October 2023, I tweeted a dumb random epiphany where I figured…