- Introduced in 1978, the revolutionary Intel 8086 microprocessor led to the x86 processors used in most desktop and server computing today. This chip is built from digital circuits, as you would expect. However, it also has analog circuits: charge pumps that turn the 8086’s 5-volt supply into a negative voltage to improve performance.1 I’ve been reverse-engineering the 8086 from die photos, and in this post I discuss the construction of these charge pumps and how they work.
- Delta Cephei (stars.astro.illinois.edu)
DELTA CEP (Delta Cephei). Surely among the most famed of all stars, fourth magnitude (4.1 or thereabouts) Delta Cephei, set at the southeastern corner of dim Cepheus (the King), does not even have a proper name. It is, however, the only star that has given its constellation name over to represent a whole class of stars, the “Cepheids.”