- The Texas Instruments TMX 1795: the (almost) first, forgotten microprocessor (righto.com)
The first 8-bit microprocessor, the TMX 1795 had the same architecture as the 8008 but was built months before the 8008. Never sold commercially, this Texas Instruments processor is now almost forgotten even though it had a huge impact on the computer industry. In this article, I present the surprising history of the TMX 1795 in detail, look at other early processors, and explain how the TMX 1795 almost became the first microprocessor. (Originally I thought the TMX 1795 was the first microprocessor, but it appears that the 4004 slightly beat it.)
- Reverse engineering ARM1 instruction sequencing, compared with the Z-80 and 6502 (righto.com)
When a computer executes a machine language instruction, it breaks down the instruction into smaller steps that are performed in sequence. For instance, a load instruction might first compute a memory address, then fetch a value from that address, and then store that value in a register. This article describes how the ARM1 processor implements instruction sequencing, performing the right steps in order. I also look briefly at the 6502 and Z-80 microprocessors and the different sequencing techniques they use.