However, this naming scheme was quite temporary, lasting for a few years during the early 1980s. There were also terms iRMX (for operating systems), iSBC (for single-board computers), and iSBX (for multimodule boards based on the 8086-architecture), all together under the heading Microsystem 80. An 8086 system, including coprocessors such as 80, and simpler Intel-specific system chips, was thereby described as an iAPX 86 system. This is due to the fact that this instruction set has become something of a lowest common denominator for many modern operating systems and probably also because the term became common after the introduction of the 80386 in 1985.Ī few years after the introduction of the 80, Intel added some complexity to its naming scheme and terminology as the "iAPX" of the ambitious but ill-fated Intel iAPX 432 processor was tried on the more successful 8086 family of chips, applied as a kind of system-level prefix. Today, however, x86 usually implies a binary compatibility also with the 32-bit instruction set of the 80386.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, when the 806 were still in common use, the term x86 usually represented any 8086-compatible CPU.
The term is not synonymous with IBM PC compatibility, as this implies a multitude of other computer hardware embedded systems, and general-purpose computers, used x86 chips before the PC-compatible market started, some of them before the IBM PC (1981) debut.Īs of 2021, most desktop computers, laptops and game consoles (with the exception of the Nintendo Switch ) sold are based on the x86 architecture, while mobile categories such as smartphones or tablets are dominated by ARM at the high end, x86 continues to dominate compute-intensive workstation and cloud computing segments, while the fastest supercomputer is ARM-based, and the top 4 are no longer x86-based. Nevertheless, of those, only Intel, AMD, VIA Technologies, and DM&P Electronics hold x86 architectural licenses, and from these, only the first two are actively producing modern 64-bit designs.
The architecture has been implemented in processors from Intel, Cyrix, AMD, VIA Technologies and many other companies there are also open implementations, such as the Zet SoC platform (currently inactive).
Many additions and extensions have been added to the x86 instruction set over the years, almost consistently with full backward compatibility. The term "x86" came into being because the names of several successors to Intel's 8086 processor end in "86", including the 80186, 80286, 8036 processors. The 8086 was introduced in 1978 as a fully 16-bit extension of Intel's 8-bit 8080 microprocessor, with memory segmentation as a solution for addressing more memory than can be covered by a plain 16-bit address. X86 is a family of instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant.
The pre-586 subset of the x86 architecture is therefore fully open.ĪMD Athlon (early version), a technically different but fully compatible x86 implementation The 80486 processor has been on the market for more than 30 years and so cannot be subject to patent claims.
For some advanced features, x86 may require license from Intel x86-64 may require an additional license from AMD. X87, IA-32, x86-64, MMX, 3DNow!, SSE, MCA, ACPI, SSE2, NX bit, SMT, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4, SSE4.2, AES-NI, CLMUL, RDRAND, SHA, MPX, SME, SGX, XOP, F16C, ADX, BMI, FMA, AVX, AVX2, AVX-VNNI, AVX512, VT-x, VT-d, AMD-V, AMD-Vi, TSX, ASF, TXT For the 32-bit generation of this architecture that is also referred to as "x86", see IA-32.ġ978 (16-bit), 1985 (32-bit), 2003 (64-bit) This article is about the Intel microprocessor architecture in general.