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IBM compatibles | Chip family tree | Evolution Intel Chips
Evolution Pricing

CPU Manufacturers - Intel

Intel has been a major manufacturer of Central Processing Units due to IBM selecting the chip for it's first PC.

It has been reported that Intel has at times had up to 95% of the PC chip market.

[Graphic from www.intel.com and (c) Intel 1997.]

Intel - IBM Compatible's

The engine or CPU of the IBM PC may be roughly classified as follows; (in order of most recent first)

1998 base line

Pentium II MMX 233-266mhz clock speed (Feb '98).

1997 base line

P6 133mhz clock speed (Feb '95).

1996 base line

Pentium Ideal as file servers, CAD/CAM and intensive graphic or multitasking environments. Will run DOS, Windows, OS/2 and Unix programs. Superscaler Design (Dual Processors) allows the chip to compute two instructions at a time. 64 bit bus interface (to the computers main memory). Built in Data and Code Cache Memory and Math Chip. Branch Prediction, attempts to forecast what the program will do next.
Feb '95 - 120Mhz P54C

1995 base line

80486DX4/100 Ideal as file servers, CAD/CAM and intensive graphic or multitasking environments. 64 bit address and data bus. Built in Cache Memory and Math Chip.

80486DX2/66.

1994 base line

80486SX High performance for applications given for 386DX-40. 64 bit address bus.

80386DX Graphical, Desktop Publications and GUI based programs. 32 bit Data and Address bus. Protected memory logic.

80386SX Popular for home and small business. 16 bit Databus, Address bus 32 bit.

1993 base line (chips no longer based on 80386)

80286 Basic entry level, originally called PC-AT (Advanced Technology). Suitable for home and educational. With a 16 bit bus, running at a variety of speeds (eg. 80286-20Mhz).

8086 Same as 8088 with a faster processor (8Mhz), 16 bit databus.

8088 Original PC chip introduced with the IBM-PC and IBM -PCXT (Hard Disk), ran at 4.77Mhz, with 8 bit data bus.

Intel - Chip family tree

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Intel - Evolution of Intel Chips

Year	CPU	Clock Speed (Ext Bus speed)	MIPS	Transistors	Internal bus	Addressable memory	Comments

1974 (Apr)	8080	2 MHz	0.64	6,000	8-bit		Altair - first PC
1975
1976
1977
1978 (Jun)	8086	5 MHz	0.33	29,000	16-bit (registers & bus)	1 Mb physical	4.77, 8 and 10MHz versions
1979 (Jun)	8088	5 MHz	0.33	29,000	16-bit		8 bit bus version of 8086
1980
1981	IBM PC						8088 based PC
1982 (Feb)	80286	8 MHz	1.2	134,000	16-bit	16MB physical 1Gb virtual	4xs faster than 8088. Protected mode (> 640K memory available) compatible with 8086/88 applications
1983
1984	IBM PC AT						80286 based PC
1985 (Oct)	80386DX	16 MHz (16Mhz)	6	275,000	32-bit registers & bus	4Gb physical 64 TB virtual (terrabytes)	15xs faster than 8088. 16, 20,25 and 33MHz variations.
1986	Compaq Deskpro 386						80386 PC
1987
1988 (Jun)	80386SX	16 MHz	2.5	275,000	32-bit (16 bit external bus )
1989 (Apr)	486DX	25 MHz (25MHz)	20	1.2 million	32-bit		25,33 ,& 50MHz versions. 8K data & instruction cache, floating point coprocessor. Executes instructions in one clock cycle, virtually doubling speed (eg 25MHz 486 approx = 50MHz 386)
1990
1991 (Apr)	486SX	20MHz	16.5	1.185 million	32-bit		486DX with floating point coprocessor disabled
1992 (Mar)	486DX2	50MHz	40	1.2 million	32-bit		clock doubling (actually halving), where 486 runs at twice the motherboards speed. 25/50 and 33/66-MHz versions
1993(Mar)	Pentium	60MHz (60MHz)
1993 (May)	Pentium	66 MHz	112	3.1 million	64 bit < check		CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer - maintains compatibility with previous 80x86 chips). Branch Prediction, Dual processors, and both data and code cache.
1995 (Feb)		120MHz
1995 (Feb)	P6	133MHz					second level cache
1997 (Jan)	Pentium MMX	166MHz (66MHz)					MMX
1997 (May)	Pentium II	233-300MHz (66MHz)		7.5 million			MMX, SEC
1998(Apr)	P II-350 & 400	350, 400 MHz (100MHz)					Deschtes, BX chipset
1998 (Apr)	Celeron	266MHz					PII MMX minus L2 cache
1998(Q4)	Celeron (Mendocino)	300MHz					Celeron with L2 cache
1999(Q2)	Pentium III (Katmai)	450-500MHz
2000	Willamette r	800MHz (133MHz?)

(1998,Jun) "On the wire", [Ref 7]