- Otto Hahn (pronounced [ˈɔtoː ˈhaːn]; 8 March 1879 – 28 July 1968) was a German chemist who was a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and discoverer of nuclear fission, the science behind nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Hahn and Lise Meitner discovered isotopes of the radioactive elements radium, thorium, protactinium and uranium. He also discovered the phenomena of atomic recoil and nuclear isomerism, and pioneered rubidium–strontium dating. In 1938, Hahn, Meitner and Fritz Strassmann discovered nuclear fission, for which Hahn alone was awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
- Reverse-engineering the register codes for the 8086 processor’s microcode (righto.com)
Like most processors, the Intel 8086 (1978) provides registers that are faster than main memory. As well as the registers that are visible to the programmer, the 8086 has a handful of internal registers that are hidden from the user. Internally, the 8086 has a complicated scheme to select which register to use, with a combination of microcode and hardware. Registers are assigned a 5-bit identifying number, either from the machine instruction or from the microcode. In this blog post, I explain how this register system works.