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the intel 8086 is the red-headed step-child of the CPU world

the intel 8086 was the Adam of home computing. In a general sense.

But who cares about 25 years ago? 😉
 
Do you mean the 8086 processor, or do you just mean a generic chip based on x86 architecture?

Either way, I know that its a processor, it goes into a motherboard, and if it doesn't work then you replace it.

Do you have a non-red haired alternative to mention here?

Does it work with the most popular operating systems?
 
Originally posted by: Linflas
Originally posted by: ElFenix
how did we ever get stuck with this mess?
Click to expand...

Open architecture FTW.
Click to expand...

open? intel did everything they could to control it. the only reason it's 'open' is because intel didn't have the fab capacity to make all they could sell. that an reverse engineering is legal.


anyway, the 8086 was essentially obsolete as soon as it came off the drawing board at intel, there were plenty of better processors out there (motorola 68000 and the amd 29000 come to mind). but ibm picked it. and so the computer industry took a giant step backward with it's most important product. intel and amd still have to deal with that mess. heck, the athlon and the pentium aren't even x86 processors anymore, really. lots of extra logic for decoding is tacked onto what more resembles a risc core than anything else.

of course, i guess ibm proved that power through complexity wins out over power through simplicity and scalableness. of course, intel killed the alpha (even though it was better than itanic at the time they bought alpha and with a decent budget would probably still be better than itanic... damn you compaq!)
 
The architecture was crap. But the instruction set was pure ace.

That's why IBM adopted the 8086, and thus x86 became the standard instruction set.

Because architecture can change. Dramatically. Compare the 8086 and moden x86 processors on the architectural level. But the instruction set stays the same. The only significant change to the x86 instruction set has been the x86-64 extension.
 
elfenix, if you dont mind me asking, what profession are you in? lots of extra logic for decoding...risc core? what are you even implying?
 
I think you have treated the "red-headed stepchild" idiom like a red-headed stepchild in so flagrantly misusing it.
 
Originally posted by: ElFenix
Originally posted by: Linflas
Originally posted by: ElFenix
how did we ever get stuck with this mess?
Click to expand...

Open architecture FTW.
Click to expand...

open? intel did everything they could to control it. the only reason it's 'open' is because intel didn't have the fab capacity to make all they could sell. that an reverse engineering is legal.


anyway, the 8086 was essentially obsolete as soon as it came off the drawing board at intel, there were plenty of better processors out there (motorola 68000 and the amd 29000 come to mind). but ibm picked it. and so the computer industry took a giant step backward with it's most important product. intel and amd still have to deal with that mess. heck, the athlon and the pentium aren't even x86 processors anymore, really. lots of extra logic for decoding is tacked onto what more resembles a risc core than anything else.

of course, i guess ibm proved that power through complexity wins out over power through simplicity and scalableness. of course, intel killed the alpha (even though it was better than itanic at the time they bought alpha and with a decent budget would probably still be better than itanic... damn you compaq!)
Click to expand...

anyone remember the 8088? hehe

8088 on wikipedia

Apparently IBM's own engineers wanted to use the Motorola 68000, and it was used later in the forgotten IBM Instruments 9000 Laboratory Computer, but IBM already had rights to manufacture the 8086 family, in exchange for giving Intel the rights to its bubble memory designs. A factor for using the 8-bit Intel 8088 version was that it could use existing Intel 8085-type components, and allowed the computer to be based on a modified 8085 design. 68000 components were not widely available at the time, though it could use Motorola 6800 components to an extent. Intel bubble memory was on the market for a while, but Intel left the market due to fierce competition from Japanese corporations who could undercut by cost, and left the memory market to focus on processors.
Click to expand...


 
The 8086 instruction set was nicer than the 6502 I started on. You whippersnappers were spoiled by hardware multiply and copy loop opcodes.
 
Originally posted by: MrDudeMan
elfenix, if you dont mind me asking, what profession are you in? lots of extra logic for decoding...risc core? what are you even implying?
Click to expand...

read up anandtech's article on Core 2. you'll see that both core and K8 take x86 instructions, translate them to something RISC-like, and then execute them. 'x86' processors have been doing this since the pentium pro/k5 era. the last processor to just natively execute x86 code was the cyrix 6x86, iirc.
 
Originally posted by: ElFenix
Originally posted by: Linflas
Originally posted by: ElFenix
how did we ever get stuck with this mess?
Click to expand...

Open architecture FTW.
Click to expand...

open? intel did everything they could to control it. the only reason it's 'open' is because intel didn't have the fab capacity to make all they could sell. that an reverse engineering is legal.


anyway, the 8086 was essentially obsolete as soon as it came off the drawing board at intel, there were plenty of better processors out there (motorola 68000 and the amd 29000 come to mind). but ibm picked it. and so the computer industry took a giant step backward with it's most important product. intel and amd still have to deal with that mess. heck, the athlon and the pentium aren't even x86 processors anymore, really. lots of extra logic for decoding is tacked onto what more resembles a risc core than anything else.

of course, i guess ibm proved that power through complexity wins out over power through simplicity and scalableness. of course, intel killed the alpha (even though it was better than itanic at the time they bought alpha and with a decent budget would probably still be better than itanic... damn you compaq!)
Click to expand...

Yep, Marketing won over Engineering.

Sad but happens most of the time.

Interesting how Intel came out with common name for it's next Marketing gimic.
Thanks to AMD kicking Intel's collective ass. It took two decades but they finally did it.

 
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