Reverse-engineering the Intel 8087's tangent algorithm: more than CORDIC (righto.com)
28 points by pwg 8 hours ago | 5 comments

kens 8 hours ago [–]
Author here for your 8087 questions...
reply
jaygreco 4 hours ago [–]
Love these deep dives. It’s fascinating to see how real, low-level engineering we all take for granted today unfolded. It’s incredible that the rough equivalent of an entire 160lb digital computer was built and baked into silicon.

Also incredible reverse engineering. In a time when seemingly all appreciation for expertise is gone it’s so refreshing to see.

reply
drob518 55 minutes ago [–]
The combination of numerical methods and low-level hardware is fascinating. Those 20th century engineers were both smart and creative.
reply
cmovq 34 minutes ago [–]
Always thought it was strange that fptan also pushes 1 to the register stack. It now makes sense it’s to retain comparability with the 8087 which returned x and y separately and required the extra division
reply