- Hedy Lamarr (german-way.com)
Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler (1914-2000) was born in Vienna in the year that the First World War began (9 November 1914). Later known as the screen star Hedy Lamarr, the clever Austrian would play an interesting off-screen role as an inventor in the Second World War – on the side of her adopted US homeland. This is just one of many facts that make Lamarr’s biography quite unlike that of most film stars.
- Reverse-engineering the conditional jump circuitry in the 8086 processor (righto.com)
Intel introduced the 8086 microprocessor in 1978 and it had a huge influence on computing. I’m reverse-engineering the 8086 by examining the circuitry on its silicon die and in this blog post I take a look at how conditional jumps are implemented. Conditional jumps are an important part of any instruction set, changing the flow of execution based on a condition. Although this instruction may seem simple, it involves many parts of the CPU: the 8086 uses microcode along with special-purpose condition logic.