Inside the 8086 processor, tiny charge pumps create a negative voltage

Re:Inside the 8086 processor, tiny charge pumps create a neg... by peter_d_sherman on Sunday July 26, 2020 @12:20AM (#23954409)

A capacitor adder, or rather, accumulator! And analog too, not digital!

I love it!

Just don't load this accumulator with $FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF -- as that will generate a voltage so high it will fry the whole system! <g>

No, I'm just kidding! (That was just an attempt at humor! <g>)

On a serious note -- I think the idea is both fasinating and meritorious!

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Re:Inside the 8086 processor, tiny charge pumps create a neg... by tails4e on Sunday July 26, 2020 @04:28AM (#23955427)

Capacitative adding and subtracting is how many ADC (analog to digital converter) and DAC (digital to analog converter) chips work. There are many architectures, but capacitor arrays that are binary weighted are common, by switching them you can create or modify a voltage for a DAC, or use this to zero in/match this to the ADC input value. A common architecture that does this is called SAR ADC [0], which basically uses a DAC as part of the ADC, and it is often a capacitive DAC.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Successive-approximation_ADC

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