Happy 30th 8086 Father of the x86 architecture
Sunday, June 8th, 2008Thirty years ago today (8 June 1978) , Intel unleashed the 8086 16-bit CPU on the world, some four years after the debut of the 8080 which powered the Altair computer (something I wish I could find to own!).
Computer world has a really nice writeup on the history and development of ver the last 30 years and corresponding brief time line
Intel’s own Microprocessor Hall of Fame describes the chip as:
A pivotal sale to IBM’s new personal computer division made the 8088 the brains of IBM’s new hit product–the IBM PC. The 8088’s success propelled Intel into the ranks of the Fortune 500, and Fortune magazine named the company one of the “Business Triumphs of the Seventies.”
Intel also has a nice image (300K) of the 8086 and 8088 die.
While purists will probably grumble about the horridness of the x86 family instruction set in comparison to some RISC and embedded controller instructions sets, it has proved highly scalable, and extensible over the last 30 years.
