Happy Birthday! X86 Turns 30 Years Old

Nina 06-07-2008

Thirty years ago, on June 8, 1978, Intel Corp. introduced its first 16-bit microprocessor, the 8086, with a splashy ad heralding "the dawn of a new era." Overblown? Sure, but also prophetic. While the 8086 was slow to take off, its underlying architecture -- later referred to as x86 -- would become one of technology's most impressive success stories.

"X86" refers to the set of machine language instructions that certain microprocessors from Intel and a few other companies execute. It essentially defines the vocabulary and usage rules for the chip. X86 processors -- from the 8086 through the 80186, 80286, 80386, 80486 and various Pentium models, right down to today's multicore chips and processors for mobile applications -- have over time incorporated a growing x86 instruction set, but each has offered backward compatibility with earlier members of the family.

In the three decades since the introduction of the 8086, the x86 family has systematically progressed from desktop PCs to servers to portable computers to supercomputers. Along the way, it has killed or held at bay a host of competing architectures and chip makers. Even some markets that had seemed locked up by competitors, such as Apple's use of Motorola PowerPCs in the Macintosh computer, have yielded to x86 in recent years.

Raven

Instead of candles we can get some old memory sticks and light them on fire lol.

Hsoolien

It should be noted that while indeed the x86 architecture (which are Complex Instruction Set Computing type processors, which are really good for desktop type platforms) has held strong even finally being the brain of Macs, however only in the desktop (includes notebook)/server market, however horrible inefficiencies in FPU (math) functions, excessive power consumption/instructions calculated have pretty much kept it out of every other market.
Examples: Mobile devices (PDA's, cell phones, mobile game platforms) heavily favour ARM series (or similar) processors because they are far more energy efficient and better at math (negeting the need for a separate math core). Game platforms, all three of the current gen systems uses PowerPC based cores, mostly because they are far better at math, something used heavily in game apps, this is also part of why Mac went x86, IBM could not keep them supplied while supplying the game industry. Graphic cards, GPU's which need to be wicked fast at math are far closer related to PowerPC architecture then x86. Actually outside desktop use pretty much every other proc is a Reduced Instruction Set Computing type processor.