conditional jump circuitry of
- Intel introduced the 8086 microprocessor in 1978 and it had a huge influence on computing. I’m reverse-engineering the 8086 by examining the circuitry on its silicon die and in this blog post I take a look at how conditional jumps are implemented. Conditional jumps are an important part of any instruction set, changing the flow of execution based on a condition. Although this instruction may seem simple, it involves many parts of the CPU: the 8086 uses microcode along with special-purpose condition logic.
- Megrez (stars.astro.illinois.edu)
MEGREZ (Delta Ursae Majoris). The faintest star of the Big Dipper, Megrez is in the Dipper’s middle, linking the handle to the bowl, and in the bigger picture linking Ursa Major’s tail to the Bear’s hindquarters. The name appropriately refers not to the Dipper, but to the Bear, and straightforwardly comes from a long Arabic phrase that means the root of the Great Bear’s tail.