<The 8086 had been around that long, the 8088 was done at IBM's <request -- the marketing concept worked well enough that the later <SX processors were done on purpose. Ah, not really. the production start dates for both chips are within two months. The 8088 was for those smaller (non PC!) apps that needed the lower cost of 8bit wide everything but still needed more performance than the 8085 could deliver and also gave a migration path for those that grew out of the 8088. The 8088 and 8086 were both second sourced before IBM did the XT. thats based on my non-preliminary intel data books from late 78 and early 79. NEC was making reverse engineered parts by 81! Even the V20 was in 81. Allison