down the Pacific Northwest coast
- The Intel 8088 processor’s instruction prefetch circuitry: a look inside (righto.com)
In 1979, Intel introduced the 8088 microprocessor, a variant of the 16-bit 8086 processor. IBM’s decision to use the 8088 processor in the IBM PC (1981) was a critical point in computer history, leading to the dominance of the x86 architecture that continues to the present.1 One way that the 8086 and 8088 increased performance was by prefetching: the processor fetches instructions from memory before they are needed, so the processor can execute them without waiting on the relatively slow memory. I’ve been reverse-engineering the 8088 from die photos and this blog post discusses what I’ve uncovered about the prefetch circuitry.
Washington Trails Association
- Picnic Point (wta.org)
Picnic Point Park doesn’t have any established trails per se, but the scenery here is delightful, and at low tide, it is possible to hike 1.5 miles to Meadowdale Beach, or 5 miles north to Point Elliot at Mukilteo, depending on how fast you hike.
