x86 or Intel 80x86 is the generic name of a microprocessor architecture first developed and manufactured by Intel.
The architecture is called x86 because Intel used to give the earliest processors in this family numeric brand names ending in the sequence "86", the 8086, the 80186, the 80286, the 386, and the 486. Because one cannot trademark numbers, Intel and most of its competitors stopped using numeric brand names after the 486, and started using proper word brand names, such as Pentium, but the earlier brand naming scheme stuck on to become the name of the entire family. Intel now refers to x86 as IA-32, an abbreviation for Intel Architecture, 32-bit.
1 History
The x86 architecture first appeared inside the Intel 8086 CPU in 1978 as a follow on to the 8008 processor (which itself followed the 4004). It was adopted (in the simpler 8088 version) three years later as the standard CPU of the IBM PC. The PC's enormous success during the last 20 years has guaranteed that the x86 architecture has become the most popular CPU architecture ever. See also Intel.
Other companies also manufacture or have manufactured CPUs conforming to the x86 architecture, for example CyrixCPU manufacturer Cyrix began in 1988 as a specialist manufacturer of high-performance maths co-processors for 286 and 386 systems. The company was founded by ex- Texas Instruments staff, and had a long but rather troubled relationship with TI throughout i, NEC CorporationNEC Corporation is a multi-national information technologies company headquarterd in Minato -ku, Tokyo, Japan. They are an internet solutions business involved in the manufacture and sales of computers, communications equipment, electron devices and softw, IBMThis article is about the International Business Machines Corporation; see IBM (disambiguation) for other uses of this abbreviation. International Business Machines Corporation IBM or colloquially, Big Blue (incorporated June 15, 1911, in operation since, IDTIDT was founded in 1980 as a semiconductor vendor. Employing over 3000 people the company both designs and fabricates semiconductor components. The current specialities of the company are semiconductors for network processing, in particular packet inspect, and TransmetaTransmeta is a US-based corporation that makes energy efficient x86 microprocessors. To date, it has produced two x86 compatible CPU architectures: the Crusoe and Efficeon processors. These CPUs have appeared in ultra-portable Laptops, Blade servers, Tabl. However, the biggest manufacturer of these processors, next to Intel is AMDFor other possible meanings of AMD see AMD (disambiguation Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. AMD ( NYSE:AMD) is a manufacturer of integrated circuits based in Sunnyvale, California. It is the second-largest supplier of x86 compatible processors, and a leading. AMD is also the next most influential driver of the evolving x86 standards after Intel.
Intel created this architecture in 1978 in the 16-bitIn computer science, 16-bit is an adjective used to describe integers that are at most two bytes wide, or to describe CPU architectures based on registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. Prominent 16-bit processors include the Intel 8086, Inte era. By 1985, it had been developed into a 32-bit architecture, when Intel created the IA-32 standards; IA-32 is the 32-bit portion of the x86 standards. The 32-bit era was by far its longest and most lucrative period of history, where Intel continued to develop further development of the IA-32 framework. By 2003, the architecture has evolved into the 64-bit era. However, this time the development was introduced not by Intel but by AMD, and the 64-bit x86 standard is called AMD64.
Note that Intel also introduced a separate 64-bit architecture used in its Itanium processors which it calls IA-64. IA-64 bears no resemblance whatsoever to the x86 architecture, not even minor evolutionary traits. IA-64 should not be confused with x86.
