- At the bow’s northern end lies Kaus Borealis, at the southern Kaus Australis, and in the middle and marking the eastern end of the arrow Kaus Media, the names an odd mixture of languages, Kaus coming from an Arabic word meaning “bow,” while the other three words respectively mean, from Latin, “northern,” “southern,” and “middle.”
- Reverse engineering standard cell logic in the Intel 386 processor (righto.com)
The 386 processor (1985) was Intel’s most complex processor at the time, with 285,000 transistors. Intel had scheduled 50 person-years to design the processor, but it was falling behind schedule. The design team decided to automate chunks of the layout, developing “automatic place and route” software.1 This was a risky decision since if the software couldn’t create a dense enough layout, the chip couldn’t be manufactured. But in the end, the 386 finished ahead of schedule, an almost unheard-of accomplishment.