- Inside the 8086 processor’s instruction prefetch circuitry (righto.com)
The groundbreaking 8086 microprocessor was introduced by Intel in 1978 and led to the x86 architecture that still dominates desktop and server computing. One way that the 8086 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 8086 from die photos and this blog post discusses what I’ve uncovered about the prefetch circuitry.
- To Your Scattered Bodies Go (Wikipedia)
To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971) is a science fiction novel by American writer Philip José Farmer, the first book in the Riverworld series. It won a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1972 at the 30th Worldcon. The title is derived from the 7th of the “Holy Sonnets” by English poet John Donne.