Home > Computing Happy 42nd Anniversary to the Original Intel 8086 and the x86 Architecture Happy 40th birthday to one of the most important CPUs ever built -- and the beginning of the PC revolution.

The Intel 8085 microprocessor was introduced 40 years back, and along with its contemporaries — the Z80 and the 6502 — is pretty much a dinosaur in terms of microprocessor history. But that ...

Forty years ago, Intel released the 8086 processor, introducing the x86 architecture that underlies every PC—Windows, Mac, or Linux—produced today.

Previously, Intel had its own 64-bit chip in Itanium, but that microprocessor was a new design and was criticized for not performing as well with existing 32-bit applications.

Now they’re on their own, flying without a net, building a new class of microprocessor on an entirely different architecture from Intel’s.