Intel 8088

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Intel 8088

The first chip used in PCs was Intel's 8088. This was not, at the time it was chosen, the best available CPU, in fact Intel's own 8086 was more powerful and had been released earlier. The 8088 was chosen for reasons of economics: its 8-bit data bus required less costly motherboards than the 16-bit 8086. Also, at the time that the original PC was designed, most of the interface chips available were intended for use in 8-bit designs. It's ironic, isn't it, that Intel's first production chip was in a way, the "8086SX"? :^) It originally shipped at 4.77 MHz and a "turbo" version was later produced that ran at 8 MHz (Woo.. :^) )

This original chip used what would be considered today to be archaic technology. The 8088 offers performance less than one-thousandth that of a modern processor, showing just how far we have come in 15 years.

Note: The NEC V20 is an 8088-compatible but actually delivers slightly better performance due to a slightly more efficient internal design.

Note: The original design of this chip was in NMOS, with newer ones in CMOS (80C88) for lower power consumption.

Look here for an explanation of the categories in the processor summary table below, including links to more detailed explanations.

General Information	Manufacturer	Intel
	Family Name	8088
	Code name	--
	Processor Generation	First
	Motherboard Generation	First
	Version	8088	8088-8
	Introduced	June 1979	!?
	Variants and Licensed Equivalents	80C88, AMD 8088, NEC V20
Speed Specifications	Memory Bus Speed (MHz)	4.77	8
	Processor Clock Multiplier	1.0
	Processor Speed (MHz)	4.77	8
	"P" Rating	--
Benchmarks	iCOMP Rating	--
	iCOMP 2.0 Rating	--
	Norton SI	1.0	1.7
	Norton SI32	--
	CPUmark32	--
Physical Characteristics	Process Technology	NMOS, CMOS
	Circuit Size (microns)	3.0
	Die Size (mm^2)	33
	Transistors (millions)	0.029
Voltage, Power and Cooling	External or I/O Voltage (V)	5
	Internal or Core Voltage (V)	5
	Power Management	None
	Cooling Requirements	None
Packaging	Packaging Style	40-Pin DIP
	Motherboard Interface	DIP socket
External Architecture	Data Bus Width (bits)	8
	Maximum Data Bus Bandwidth (Mbytes/sec)	4.5	7.6
	Address Bus Width (bits)	20
	Maximum Addressable Memory	1 MB
	Level 2 Cache Type	None
	Level 2 Cache Size	--
	Level 2 Cache Bus Speed	--
	Multiprocessing	No
Internal Architecture	Instruction Set	8088
	MMX Support	No
	Processor Modes	Real
	x86 Execution Method	Native
Internal Components	Register Size (bits)	16
	Pipeline Depth (stages)	1
	Level 1 Cache Size	None
	Level 1 Cache Mapping	--
	Level 1 Cache Write Policy	--
	Integer Units	1
	Floating Point Unit / Math Coprocessor	Optional 8087 Coprocessor
	Instruction Decoders	1
	Branch Prediction Buffer Size / Accuracy	None
	Write Buffers	None
	Performance Enhancing Features	None

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