kens

39 ms·

691.
by kens 3y ago
Yeah, a lot of engineering talent went into supporting faster and faster clocks. I linked to an Intel presentation from 2005 that discusses their clock circuitry in detail, and it's complicated. The slide on page 2 is interesting: it s
692.
by kens 3y ago
Thanks, I've fixed that now.
693.
by kens 3y ago
> It [the word "intelligence"] doesn't appear until the early 20th century I'm not sure what you mean here, since the word dates back to the late 14th century with roughly the same meaning as now. Perhaps you're
694.
by kens 3y ago
Author here: this is a pretty obscure circuit, but hopefully it is interesting. I figured I'd start with the simple parts of the 386. Only 285,000 more transistors to go :-)
695.
by kens 3y ago
It took me a while to figure out how to use this. The idea is to visualize complex number mappings. You draw on the left square and the result is drawn on the right square. The result is generated by either a Φ function (mapping the complex
696.
by kens 3y ago
That post is a very good description of Google and matches my experience at Google (2004-2016), both the good and bad. There is a lot of cynicism and misunderstanding of Google on HN, so hopefully this post will help. (Note: you need to scr
697.
by kens 3y ago
Your source is slightly confused. The original design of the Apollo Guidance Computer used core-transistor logic and they built three prototypes 1A, 1B, and 3C in large racks. In 1962, they switched to integrated circuits and built rack-mou
698.
by kens 3y ago
No, the Apollo Guidance Computer block I also used integrated circuits: 4100 3-input NOR gates according to Eldon Hall's book. It's a bit murky what computer was the first to use ICs. Texas Instruments built the Semiconductor Netw
699.
by kens 3y ago
Much as I'm a fan of the AGC, I need to point out that Whirlwind (1951) and SAGE (1958) were interactive way before the AGC.
700.
by kens 3y ago
I think there are a few missing steps there :-)
701.
by kens 3y ago
The trick is that the drivers that supply bit and #bit are shared by all the registers. At the top of the register file you have 64 drivers for the bit lines and then these signals feed all the cells.
702.
by kens 3y ago
Yes, that's very possible that the mystery registers are scratch registers. But there are lots of other possibilities too.
703.
by kens 3y ago
Fixed :-)
704.
by kens 3y ago
Author here if anyone has 386 questions. The 386 is very complicated, probably too much for me to fully reverse engineer. But I find it interesting to look at small circuits on the die.
705.
by kens 3y ago
People complaining about punch cards? I started programming with optical mark cards which were much, much worse. I'd fill in bubbles on each card to make the program, mail the program to the Waterloo computer center, and get my output
706.
Git rebase, what can go wrong(jvns.ca)
306 points by kens 3y ago|394 comments
707.
by kens 3y ago
I'm not sure what distinction you are making between marron (brown), violet, and orange in French from other basic colors. Can you clarify this?
708.
by kens 3y ago
To clarify, the Journal of Irreproducible Results was a magazine of scientific humor. The article is a plausible but absurd explanation for a real linguistic phenomenon, Basic Color Terms.
709.
by kens 3y ago
For more on why languages start with words for "dark" and "light", then add red, blue and other colors in order, see my Journal of Irreproducible Results paper "Laundry and the origin of basic color terms": ht
710.
by kens 3y ago
That's a rather unusual interpretation of the quote. According to several books, the meaning of that quote is that science is either mathematical and quantitative, or descriptive. In other words, you're either attempting to unders
711.
by kens 3y ago
Well, square feet of Rubylith maybe. I haven't been able to find the exact date that Intel switched from Rubylith to digitally-generated masks, but I'm pretty sure they had switched by 1982.
712.
by kens 3y ago
The first counter simply counts, so when you sample it you get a pseudorandom number. (Assuming the sampling time is random.) Then applying the mask gives you the power of 2 scaling.
713.
by kens 3y ago
Robert Garner is writing a book on the history of Ethernet; I'm leaving those historical details to him :-)
714.
by kens 3y ago
I looked at the datasheet of a random modern Ethernet chip (ENC28J60) and it's simpler than I expected, doing much less than the old Intel chip, although it includes the low level "PHY" circuitry, which was a separate Intel c
715.
by kens 3y ago
Thanks, I've fixed that.
716.
by kens 3y ago
Author here. This chip is pretty obscure, but I was looking at it for another project and figured I might as well write it up. Any questions?
717.
by kens 3y ago
This seems like a weak survey that they are trying to turn into a Social Trend. Specifically, they found that "51.5% expressed a desire for more content centered around friendships and platonic relationships." That doesn't se
718.
Waymo says insurance data shows its driverless cars are safer than humans(nbcbayarea.com)
221 points by kens 3y ago|281 comments
719.
by kens 3y ago
I concur; the graphs didn't show much difference to me (but I was on my phone so I couldn't be certain :-) The study seems impressive from the title, but reading it not so much. The Alzheimer's patients in the study are olde
720.
by kens 3y ago
The version of that story that I read is much longer, by Funranium Labs. It is entertainingly written, but I wonder how much is urban legend: https://www.funraniumlabs.com/2018/09/the-fringes-of-regulat...

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