Happy Birthday, x86
Jun. 16th, 2008 06:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
paserbypIn June 1978, Intel Corp. introduced a microprocessor known as the 8086. Over the decades that followed, the 8086's underlying architecture, later referred to as x86, would become one of technology's most impressive success stories.
The x86 family has progressed from desktop PCs to servers, portable computers and supercomputers. Along the way, it has vanquished or held at bay a host of competing architectures and chip makers. Even some markets that had seemed safely in the hands of other processors, such as Motorola's PowerPC, which is used in Apple's Macintosh computer, have yielded to x86 in recent years.
The term x86 refers to the set of machine language instructions that certain microprocessors from Intel and a few other companies can execute. It defines the vocabulary and usage rules for the chip. X86 processors -- beginning with the 8086 and including the 80186, 80286, 80386, 80486 and various Pentium models right down to today's multicore chips and processors for mobile applications -- have incorporated a growing x86 instruction set, but each has offered backward compatibility.
For details: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=319863&pageNumber=1
The x86 family has progressed from desktop PCs to servers, portable computers and supercomputers. Along the way, it has vanquished or held at bay a host of competing architectures and chip makers. Even some markets that had seemed safely in the hands of other processors, such as Motorola's PowerPC, which is used in Apple's Macintosh computer, have yielded to x86 in recent years.
The term x86 refers to the set of machine language instructions that certain microprocessors from Intel and a few other companies can execute. It defines the vocabulary and usage rules for the chip. X86 processors -- beginning with the 8086 and including the 80186, 80286, 80386, 80486 and various Pentium models right down to today's multicore chips and processors for mobile applications -- have incorporated a growing x86 instruction set, but each has offered backward compatibility.
For details: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=319863&pageNumber=1
