- Reverse engineering the barrel shifter circuit on the Intel 386 processor die (righto.com)
The Intel 386 processor (1985) was a large step from the 286 processor, moving x86 to a 32-bit architecture. The 386 also dramatically improved the performance of shift and rotate operations by adding a “barrel shifter”, a circuit that can shift by multiple bits in one step. The die photo below shows the 386’s barrel shifter, highlighted in the lower left and taking up a substantial part of the die.
- Fomalhaut (stars.astro.illinois.edu)
FOMALHAUT (Alpha Piscis Austrinus). This wonderful first magnitude (1.16, ranking 18th) star of northern-hemisphere autumn, usually pronounced “fo-ma-low,” slides slowly in lonely grandeur above the southern horizon (as seen from the north) during the months of October and November.
- Fomalhaut (Wikipedia)
Fomalhaut (UK: /ˈfɒməloʊt/, US: /ˈfoʊməlhɔːt/) is the brightest star in the southern constellation of Piscis Austrinus, the Southern Fish, and one of the brightest stars in the night sky. It has the Bayer designation Alpha Piscis Austrini, which is an alternative form of α Piscis Austrini, and is abbreviated Alpha PsA or α PsA. This is a class A star on the main sequence approximately 25 light-years (7.7 pc) from the Sun as measured by the Hipparcos astrometry satellite. Since 1943, the spectrum of this star has served as one of the stable anchor points by which other stars are classified.
