I am still learning how the gating system works in the cpu's so does the atmel cpu always have energy flowing even when its off? I feel that the cpu is all digital so to store the memory when it is off I am thinking it has a system to keep the transistors at a state maybe for years on low energy? my goal is to eventually make a cpu with no integrated circuits just diodes, capacitors, resistors, transistors.
I am still learning how the gating system works in the cpu's so does the atmel cpu always have energy flowing even when its off?
No, if it's off it doesn't get any current so there's no energy. In the off state only the contents of the flash and EEPROM memories are conserved, RAM data is deleted.
I feel that the cpu is all digital so to store the memory when it is off I am thinking it has a system to keep the transistors at a state maybe for years on low energy?
Define what you think the "off" state of the CPU is!
my goal is to eventually make a cpu with no integrated circuits just diodes, capacitors, resistors, transistors.
Good luck! That's quite a bit of work and a lot of money to spend. Even simple CPUs as the AVRs in the lower end Arduino models have thousands of transistors (in the range of 50'000) so rebuilding such a system with basic components is a huge task.
8bitbacon:
Imy goal is to eventually make a cpu with no integrated circuits just diodes, capacitors, resistors, transistors.
Real men use tubes.
As far as I know there were no "hobbyist" computers made with transistors. There were commercial/industrial computers made with transistors before the microprocessor was invented (vacuum tubes before that) and they were in use for many years before microprocessors became powerful enough to take-over the market.
If you just think about the memory.... one bit takes (at least) one transistor. One byte is 8 transistors, 1K is 8000 transistors, and 1M is 8 million transistors! ...There was core memory but 1 magnetic core is also 1-bit.
I believe there were some made with 74xx series logic chips but they were a "nightmare" (LOTS of wire-wrap). It wouldn't be quite as much of a nightmare today if you used surface-mount PC boards, but it would be slow and "underpowered".
It probably wasn't the first, but 1st hobbyist computer I remember was the Altair 8800 and it used an early Intel microprocessor.
I feel that the cpu is all digital so to store the memory when it is off I am thinking it has a system to keep the transistors at a state maybe for years on low energy?
I suggest you study-up on how RAM, EEPROM, and flash memory work. The ATmega chip has all 3 types of memory inside. Your Arduino program is stored in flash so it's not lost when you turn-off power. (There was something called EPROM but it's outdated.)
my goal is to eventually make a cpu with no integrated circuits just diodes, capacitors, resistors, transistors.
You might what to try making a [u]binary adder[/u] with logic gates. Then if you are really ambitious you can do some research into making the logic gates with transistors.