- Star Tales - Sagitta (ianridpath.com)
Sagitta, the third-smallest constellation in the sky, has no stars brighter than fourth magnitude, but it was well-known to the Greeks and was among the 48 constellations listed by Ptolemy in the Almagest. Aratus described it as ‘alone, without a bow’ since there is no sign of the archer who might have shot it.
- 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.
- Sagitta (Wikipedia)
Sagitta is a dim but distinctive constellation in the northern sky. Its name is Latin for ‘arrow’, not to be confused with the significantly larger constellation Sagittarius ’the archer’. It was included among the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations defined by the International Astronomical Union. Although it dates to antiquity, Sagitta has no star brighter than 3rd magnitude and has the third-smallest area of any constellation.
