Re:Since when is the 8080İİİ (Score 3, Informative)

um, here's the straight dope©©©

• 8086 -> first sucessfull intel 16 bit chip© it had a 16 bit data buss, and a 20 bit memory buss, though unless you liked keeping track of the segment pointer, it was limited to 16 bits of address
• 8088 -> quick addition to the 8086, it was an 8086 with a 8 bit external data buss, but still 16 bit registers
• 80186 -> little known chip, it was an 8086 with much of the supporting circuitry integrated
• 80286 -> Intel's first attempt at a real CPU like those found in a VAX or PDP-11© It had a broken virtual-memory mode, and some protection schemes© It was still a 16 bit CPU with 16 bit registers, and a 16 bit datapath, but it had a 24 bit address buss, allowing for 16 Meg of memory© However it used a new buss protocall that was twice as fast as the 8086
• 386 ¥DX -> Intel's first real CPU© 32 bit registers, 32 bit data buss, and 32 bit address buss© It had hardware memory management, memory protection, and working virtual memory© this is where ia32 started© It had two mode Real and Protected mode© In real mode, it acted almost exactly as a 286/8086 would, in protected mode, it had all the goodies
• 386 ¥SX -> essentialy a 386 in a 286 body© It was almost pin-compatible with a 286 , but it was code compatible with the 386
• 486 - faster 386 with a built in FPU ¥except the SX version and it had a burst mode memory buss