History of the Intel Cpus and Pcs

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Steven Michael Stepien TB143 Week 2 6/25/2011 HISTORY OF INTEL CPUs USED IN PCs That was the year Intel created the 8086, a 3-micron chip chugging along at 4.77MHz, while later versions would run at up to 10MHz. The 8086 had just 29,000 transistors, which was still nearly four times as many as the 8085 released in 1976, and was Intel's first 16-bit microprocessor and responsible for kicking off the 16-bit era (note that the 8086 wasn't the first 16-bit chip). Backwards compatibility with software written for the 8008, 8080, and 8085, and the ability to address 1MB of memory natively made the 8086 a near instant success. Intel entertained the computing world with the 80286 in 1982, a 1.5-micron part with a mind-boggling 134,000 transistors and 16MB of addressable memory. The first 286 pedaled along at 6MHz and, like the original 8086, would later double in speed. However, clock for clock, the 286 boasted twice (or more) the performance of the 8086, a generational leap in the x86 architecture that has never been duplicated to this day. Throughout the decade, the 286 became synonymous with IBM PCs, and within 6 years of its release, Intel estimates there were 15 million 286-based PCs installed worldwide. The 386, which was later named 386DX to avoid confusion with a lower cost 386SX variant that would debut three years after launch, initially ran at 16MHz and, once again, would eventually double in speed to 33MHz. It also doubled the number of transistors from its predecessor to 275,000 and was Intel's first 32-bit processor. The 386 could address up to 4GB (not MB) of memory, could switch between protected mode and real mode, and added a third 'virtual' mode, which allowed the execution of real mode applications that were unable to run in protected mode. Intel released one more x86 processor, the 486DX. The first CPU to include a built-in math

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