- Tennessee (/ˌtɛnɪˈsiː/ TEN-ih-SEE, locally /ˈtɛnɪsi/ TEN-iss-ee), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina to the east, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to the south, Arkansas to the southwest, and Missouri to the northwest. Tennessee is geographically, culturally, and legally divided into three Grand Divisions of East, Middle, and West Tennessee. Nashville is the state’s capital and largest city, and anchors its largest metropolitan area. Other major cities include Memphis, Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Clarksville. Tennessee’s population as of the 2020 United States census is approximately 6.9 million.
- Die analysis of the 8087 math coprocessor’s fast bit shifter (righto.com)
Floating-point numbers are very useful for scientific programming, but early microprocessors only supported integers directly. Although floating-point was common in mainframes back in the 1950s and 1960s, it wasn’t until 1980 that Intel introduced the 8087 floating-point coprocessor for microcomputers. Adding this chip to a microcomputer such as the IBM PC made floating-point operations up to 100 times faster. This was a huge benefit for applications such as AutoCAD, spreadsheets, or flight simulators. The downside was the 8087 chip cost hundreds of dollars.
