14 Jun
2026
14 Jun
'26
10:48 a.m.
The late Luiz Barroso used to say that the x86 ISA is the most successful
ISA ever designed, by sheer numbers and longevity. I guess time will tell,
but so far, I think he has been right. The instruction set is still out
there, likely with more binaries compiled for one version or another than
for any other ISA. Intel's recent attempts to remove backward
compatibility for 16-bit Real Mode (X86-S, which failed) are a case in
point.
On Sun, Jun 14, 2026 at 9:30 AM Johan Helsingius via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
There is very little original 8086 technology in a
modern Intel CPU, and
whatever there still is, it is mostly holding back the capabilities of
the chips.
By numbers, ARM has already won, long ago.
Julf
On 14/06/2026 5:27 pm, Murray McCullough via cctalk wrote:
Intel's x86 technology as in the 8086 came
into existence for the
microcomputer-user at this time back in June 1978. It was a response to
Motorola's and Zilog's move to 16-bit processing. Still in use
today...the
basic tech so to speak. Can it be unseated by
RISC(Apple and such) and
Nvidia?
Happy computing.
Murray 🙂