- Inside the ALU of the 8085 microprocessor (righto.com)
The arithmetic-logic unit is a fundamental part of any computer, performing addition, subtraction, and logic operations, but how it works is a mystery to many people. I’ve reverse-engineered the ALU circuit from the 8085 microprocessor and explain how it works. The 8085’s ALU is a surprisingly complex circuit that at first looks like a mysterious jumble of gates, but it can be understood if you don’t mind diving into some Boolean logic.
- Reverse-engineering the 8085’s ALU and its hidden registers (righto.com)
This article describes how the ALU of the 8085 microprocessor works and how it interacts with the rest of the chip, based on reverse-engineering of the silicon. (This is part 2 of my ALU reverse-engineering; part 1 described the circuit for a single ALU bit.) Along with the accumulator, the ALU uses two undocumented registers - ACT and TMP - and this article describes how they work in detail, as well as how the ALU is controlled.
- Reverse-engineering the 8085’s decimal adjust circuitry (righto.com)
In this post I reverse-engineer and describe the simple decimal adjust circuit in the 8085 microprocessor. Binary-coded decimal arithmetic was an important performance feature on early microprocessors. The idea behind BCD is to store two 4-bit decimal numbers in a byte. For instance, the number 42 is represented in BCD as 0100 0010 (0x42) instead of binary 00101010 (0x2a). This continues my reverse engineering series on the 8085’s ALU, flag logic, undocumented flags, register file, and instruction set.
- Notes on the PLA on the 8085 chip (righto.com)
The 8085 processor uses a PLA (programmable logic array) to control much of the activity within the processor, such as instruction decoding and controlling the data flow between components of the chip. Pavel Zima has reverse-engineered the transistor-level circuitry of the 8085 microprocessor. I’ve looked into this in a bit more to figure out the architecture of the Programmable Logic Array, which takes up a large fraction of the chip. The PLA circuit is much more complex than the PLA on the 6502, for instance. It turns out that Pavel is ahead of me with information on the decode and timing PLAs, but the information below may still be of interest.
- The 8085’s register file reverse engineered (righto.com)
On the surface, a microprocessor’s registers seem like simple storage, but not in the 8085 microprocessor. Reverse-engineering the 8085 reveals many interesting tricks that make the registers fast and compact. The picture below shows that the registers and associated control circuitry occupy a large fraction of the chip, so efficiency is important. Each bit is implemented with a surprisingly compact circuit. The instruction set is designed to make register accesses efficient. An indirection trick allows quick register exchanges. Many register operations use the unexpected but efficient data path of going through the ALU.
- Silicon reverse engineering: The 8085’s undocumented flags (righto.com)
The 8085 microprocessor has two undocumented status flags: V and K. These flags can be reverse-engineered by looking at the silicon of the chip, and their function turns out to be different from previous explanations. In addition, the implementation of these flags shows that they were deliberately implemented, which raises the question of why they were not documented or supported by Intel. Finally, examining how these flag circuits were implemented in silicon provides an interesting look at how microprocessors are physically implemented.
- Intel 8085 (Wikipedia)
The Intel 8085 ("eighty-eighty-five") is an 8-bit microprocessor produced by Intel and introduced in March 1976. It is software-binary compatible with the more-famous Intel 8080 with only two minor instructions added to support its added interrupt and serial input/output features. However, it requires less support circuitry, allowing simpler and less expensive microcomputer systems to be built. The “5” in the part number highlighted the fact that the 8085 uses a single +5-volt (V) power supply by using depletion-mode transistors, rather than requiring the +5 V, −5 V and +12 V supplies needed by the 8080. This capability matched that of the competing Z80, a popular 8080-derived CPU introduced the year before. These processors could be used in computers running the CP/M operating system.