oldest continental crust of
- Reverse-engineering the multiplication algorithm in the Intel 8086 processor (righto.com)
While programmers today take multiplication for granted, most microprocessors in the 1970s could only add and subtract — multiplication required a slow and tedious loop implemented in assembly code. One of the nice features of the Intel 8086 processor (1978) was that it provided machine instructions for multiplication, able to multiply 8-bit or 16-bit numbers with a single instruction. Internally, the 8086 still performed a loop, but the loop was implemented in microcode: faster and transparent to the programmer. Even so, multiplication was a slow operation, about 24 to 30 times slower than addition.
- Carton (Wikipedia)
A craton ( /ˈkreɪtɒn/ KRAYT-on, /ˈkrætɒn/ KRAT-on, or /ˈkreɪtən/ KRAY-tən; from Ancient Greek: κράτος kratos “strength”) is an old and stable part of continental lithosphere (the Earth’s two topmost layers, the crust and the lithospheric mantle). Having often survived cycles of merging and rifting of continents, cratons are generally found in the interiors of tectonic plates; the exceptions occur where geologically recent rifting events have separated cratons and created passive margins along their edges. Cratons are composed of ancient crystalline basement rocks covered by younger sedimentary rocks. They have a thick crust and deep lithospheric roots extending several hundred kilometres into Earth’s mantle. In simpler terms, craton is a layer of the earths crust on that has been almost unchanged through all of history. This crust consists of shields and platforms. Shields are made of basement rock and are visible, while platforms is the portion not visible made up of sedimentary rock.