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“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 …
“Processors are driven by a clock, which controls the timing of each step inside the chip. In this blog post, I’ll examine the clock-generation circuitry inside the Intel 386 processor. Earlier processors such as the 8086 (1978) were simpler …
“The groundbreaking Intel 386 processor (1985) was the first 32-bit processor in the x86 line. It has numerous internal registers: general-purpose registers, index registers, segment selectors, and more specialized registers. In this blog post, I look at the silicon die …
“You might think of the Intel 386 processor (1985) as just an early processor in the x86 line, but the 386 was a critical turning point for modern computing in several ways.1 First, the 386 moved the x86 architecture …
“A key concept for a processor is the management of “state”, information that persists over time. Much of a computer is built from logic gates, such as NAND or NOR gates, but logic gates have no notion of time. Processors …
“The Intel 8086 processor started the x86 architecture that is still extensively used today. The 8086 has some quirky characteristics: it is little-endian, has a parity flag, and uses explicit I/O instructions instead of just memory-mapped I/O. It …
“The Intel 8086 microprocessor (1978) revolutionized computing by founding the x86 architecture that continues to this day. One of the lesser-known features of the 8086 is the “hold” functionality, which allows an external device to temporarily take control of the …
“What happens if you give the Intel 8086 processor an instruction that doesn’t exist? A modern microprocessor (80186 and later) will generate an exception, indicating that an illegal instruction was executed. However, early microprocessors didn’t include the circuitry …
“The Intel 8086 microprocessor (1978) started the x86 architecture that continues to this day. In this blog post, I’m focusing on a small part of the chip: the address and data pins that connect the chip to external memory …
“This is a Noname graphical LCD display salvaged from an unknown device. We are going to figure out its pinout and try to interface it. Introduction I am basically writing this tutorial as a note for myself to avoid another …