8086 - and 40 years later, another 8086(K)
tj_1ca9500b
Posts: 2,057
https://wccftech.com/intel-core-i7-8086k-6-core-5-ghz-8-june-launch-399-usd/
Yep, June 8th, Intel is launching a 40th Anniversary edition nod to the 8086, utilizing an i7 with 6 cores/12 threads, and boost clocks up to 5 GHz.
My first home computer was built around the Motorola6809E, a bit newer than the 8086, but yeah the 8086 was a significant milestone in computing.
We've come a long way, baby!
Post edited by tj_1ca9500b on
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My 1st computer was a 386 desktop that I had shipped to me at AIT, but my drill sargeant threw a fit so I sent it home.
I was afraid I was going to get rusty at programming. Hmmm, that was '93 so 25 years ago.
I could imagine that being a bit problematic. I went through in 94 and we were barely allowed cd players, etc. I don't even know if laptops existed back then. I wish I'd kept some of those Computer Shopper mags just for memories. My first first was a C64, but my first PC compatible was a Tandy 386SX. Good times.
Tandy 386SX, wow, Tandy was the first business that hired me to program out of college. They were using both 286s with Xenix and 386s with SCO UNIX then.
For comparison, the 8086 launched at the whopping frequency of 5 MHz, approximately 1000 times slower than the 40th anniversary chip's reported boost clock frequency.
4.77MHz IIRC, at least it was in the IBM XTs we had.
My first computer was 6502 based, being a BBC Model B.
With the Turbo switch?
The first micro I worked with was the Motorola 68000 the original, not 68010 or 020 or 040 etc, but 000
We used those at my next job after Tandy, we used them on PBXes. That was a fun job.
...so what socket will these use and will the be compatible with older OS versions?
The good old BBC B: I didn't buy mine until I could afford a floppy disk drive to go with it. I hated cassettes.
My first 'puter was a Tandy 600 in 1985. Ouch.
LOL, I wanted a Tandy but I couldn't afford them even though I worked for them.
My first pc was also a 386 and i was the talk of the town. I had and EGA graphics card with no less then 16(!) colours and my dad got me an Ad-lib sound card from one of his collegues. One of the few times i was the popular kid
My first computer was Dragon 32, motorola 6809 and 32 kilobytes of memory.
Sincler spcetrum was also popular at the time.
Things I'm not nostalgic for: CRT monitors with low refresh rates under fluorescent lights. Endless arguments about flicker with those who couldn't see it and couldn't therefore see what the problem was.
...+1. Part of why I think my vision is going south.
Already 40 years - time raced. I started with Sinclair ZX80, Z80 CPU 4 MHz, 4 KB ROM and 1 KB RAM. Took a while to fill up 1 KB. Then came CP/M and DOS with Intel 8080, 8086 & 8087, 80186, 80286 (12 MHz), 80386, 80486, Pentium, ... Yeah, it's been a while and things did improve a bit here and there.
I can still remember going to a local computer store and paying like $60 for ram to upgrade my video memory. I think it was 128k or something like that. I could finally view hi-res 640x480 images in full 256 bit color!
One thing I am nostalgic for: having a brightness and contrast knob on my monitor so I can adjust the picture without having to go through a menu. I have to do it every morning and evening. But I do get headaches and eye soreness from 60hz refresh CRTs, so LCD/LEDs were a welcome relief.
First homecomputer I ever touched was a Tandy TRS 80. No idea what the clockspeed was, RAM only a few kilobytes. No floppies, data was stored on a cassette recorder. I mostly learned that I sucked at Basic-programming. First computer that I bought was a beefed up Amiga 1200 in 1992, with a Motorola 68030 at 40 Mhz and 8 MB extra RAM. I mostly used it as a linetester for my pencil animations, and had a genlock for mixing computer-animations with video. It was way more advanced than the PCs in that era.
First PC that I bought was in 1998. Windows 98SE, a Pentium II at 350 Mhz, 128MB RAM, and a Diamond Fire GL 1000 graphics card, and I installed a magazine cover CD version of Poser 1 on it, sometime later. (Which I thought was both quite funny and quite useless: didn't get hooked until Poser 4...)
Oops, I forgot a whole segment of my life. Before the Motorola 68000 I had had experience working with some Intel 8080 machines using CPM operating system for a few months. They were cute, but there's a reason I pushed them out of my memory.
But regarding the Intel 8086, after the Motorola 68000 I had an experience with an Intel 8086 but after using the 68000, I found the 8086 to be an overly complicated, underperforming, obtuse creature.
I poked in on the Intel world now and then but mostly stayed away from them thereafter until the Windows7 operating system somewhat effectively hid some of their obtuseness.
Although, I admit that they took over the world.
My first computer was a Sinclair ZX80 also, built from a kit!
My first were Pong and later on the ZX Spectrum. I'll never ever forget the sound of loading cassettes!
My first computer was a Commadore Vic 20 in 1982. it was a year till I got a cassette. So I could finally save my basic programs. lol!
Then that awesome massive 8k memory expansion cartridge a year after that. How times have changed!
A zx81, which either didn't work, or only lasted a day; I returned it and got a Commodore Vic 20; my Amiga 1500 still works.
I was eyeing an I9 the other day, until I realised I needed both kidneys. Although in comparrison to what I paid for 4MB of RAM for an Amiga 500 (£400), it is actually pretty cheap. :D
First one I owned myself was an Apple ][ GS, running a WDC 65C816 cpu. First ones I ever used were a DEC PDP-11/70, a TRS-80 Model II, and an Apple ][+ about 10 years before I got my GS.
Yeah, been doing this stuff a LONG time.
Someone said that the 8086 was a milestone. I suppose it is, but I always thought of it as a millstone
I started programming professionally in assembler using the Z-80 which I still think is a nice design. Then I was presented with the 8086. OK we're going from 16 bit addresses to .... 20 bit? And there are these segment registers, we've got addresses split into a segment and an offset, we have to reload a segement register to go beyond 64k? What is this mess???
At home I went from 8 bit micros to an Amiga with the 68000 and a simple 32 bit linear address space. And don't start me on how the Amiga was much better that the PCs of the time. I still wonder what sort of computers we might have now if the effort that went into devloping the modern PC had gone into devloping the Amiga.
I started at home with 8 bit micros. I had a TRS-80, Spectrum, Atari 400 (my favourite 8 bit machine), C64. Then I went to the Amiga, then I admitted defeat and went to a Windows 95 PC. PCs have advanced enough to good machines now, but at the time I thought the move from Amiga to PC was a step backwards.
To clarify, it was a milestone for Intel, which is why they are giving it the nod. Also it was a predecessor to the 186, 286, 386, etc. which are part of the x86 family that dominates computing today. AMD's chips are also firmly rooted in the x86 processor tree, and at one point were 'plug in' replacements for Intel chips on Intel based chipsets.
Even Apple is built around x86 these days, even though they were built around Motorola chips for a number of years. Apple is reportedly ditching Intel for a chip of it's own design in 2020, but there's not much info about that yet.
ARM is also talking about releasing a new CPU that will offer performance comparable to other laptop processors out there today, which could be interesting...
Like it or not, Intel dominates the desktop, server and laptop markets as far as CPUs are concerned, with AMD still a distant second, and everyone else far behind that. GPUs are another story, and of course Nvidia currently holds the top spot there.
There were certainly more interesting options back in the day, and I owned/used several of them. I personally didn't fully tranistion to Intel/AMD based PCs until the mid'1990s, first with an Apple/Intel hybrid computer which had both an Intel chip and a Motorola chip, with separate OS hiearchies, then to a Pentium based computer briefly, then to a Super Socket 7 computer with a K6-III at it's heart which I very much enjoyed until I eventually moved on to a socketed desktop Athlon. It's been laptops almost exclusively for me since then (3 AMD based, and then 1 Intel based).
This laptop that I'm using now has the first Intel desktop/laptop CPU I've bought since the 1990's, which was necessary because there aren't any decent AMD CPU + dual GTX 1080 laptop options out there. I think it's important to keep the competition healthy, but there simply wasn't another option in this case, due to Daz and Nvidia being effectively welded together at the hip. AMD simply surrendered too much ground to Intel, and it's nice that AMD is finally able to fight hard once again (with decent offereings) to regain some of that ground.
Apple moving to another CPU rather than Intel's will be a mistake with computer graphics advancing so much faster on intel and AMD chips Unless it switches to AMD CPUs.
The only thing about that is Apple's market capitalization is more than Intel, Nvidia and AMD combined. Even after their share buybacks, Apple probably has more spare cash sitting around than Intel is worth as a company. One thing silicon valley has showed us is that the company with the money gets whatever they want. If Apple can't develop better technology or hire talent from their competitors, they can just buy the whole company. Microsoft did it plenty of times. But I think producing their own CPUs is just to maintain quality control over their products and avoid exploits like the one that happened a few months ago to Intel and AMD.
I only wish they would open their own DRAM plant and stop buying up all the memory on the market, raising prices for the rest of us.