- Ernst Friedrich Ferdinand Zermelo (/zɜːrˈmɛloʊ/, German: [tsɛɐ̯ˈmeːlo]; 27 July 1871 – 21 May 1953) was a German logician and mathematician, whose work has major implications for the foundations of mathematics. He is known for his role in developing Zermelo–Fraenkel axiomatic set theory and his proof of the well-ordering theorem. Furthermore, his 1929 work on ranking chess players is the first description of a model for pairwise comparison that continues to have a profound impact on various applied fields utilizing this method.
- Tracing the roots of the 8086 instruction set to the Datapoint 2200 minicomputer (righto.com)
The Intel 8086 processor started the x86 architecture that is still extensively used today. The 8086 has some quirky characteristics: it is little-endian, has a parity flag, and uses explicit I/O instructions instead of just memory-mapped I/O. It has four 16-bit registers that can be split into 8-bit registers, but only one that can be used for memory indexing. Surprisingly, the reason for these characteristics and more is compatibility with a computer dating back before the creation of the microprocessor: the Datapoint 2200, a minicomputer with a processor built out of TTL chips. In this blog post, I’ll look in detail at how the Datapoint 2200 led to the architecture of Intel’s modern processors, step by step through the 8008, 8080, and 8086 processors.