Computer scientist Ken Shirriff has been reverse-engineering the internals of Intel's 8087 floating-point coprocessor, first released in 1980. According to Adafruit, Shirriff's latest analysis examines the adder circuit at the heart of the chip — the component responsible for its legendary speed: math operations up to 100 times faster than the CPU alone. The 8087 was a pivotal moment in personal computing, democratizing complex calculations. Shirriff's work reveals how engineers packed sophisticated arithmetic logic into the silicon constraints of the era, offering a window into the clever hardware design that powered the microcomputer revolution.

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