45 Years Intel 8088

hey folks welcome back to my Channel today with another anniversary video on the first of June 1979 so 45 years ago to this date the Intel 888 CPU was launched why is this vintage processor in any way interesting to talk about well let's dive into it when we look at the overall transistor count evolution of CPUs over time we often forget that it all started way back in the 1970s so let's zoom into this period end of 1971 Intel launched the world's first CPU the Intel 404 being a 4-bit processor soon enough the first 8-bit Intel CPU was brought to the market the 8008 leading to the even more successful 8080 due to its usage in many early computers such as the MS Al 8,800 and the m I 80 this was followed by the compatible and more refined at85 and later by the Assembly Language compatible 86 which was Intel's first 16bit processor now one must understand that the straight jump from an 8bit to a 16bit system seems logic from evolutionary point of view but at the time it came with quite some hurdles especially high cost I mean not only the cost of the processor itself but also of all required components and circuitry supporting the CPU as a consequence Intel saw the opportunity to introduce a lowcost 8bit version of the 8086 and this is when the 8088 today's birthday child was born already in March 1979 Intel started communicating about this new chip claiming the 888 has the full 16bit internal architecture of the 86 made it to an 8bit databas interface that is compatible with the 85 the 5 mahz speed of the 88 and total software compatibility with the 886 makes the 88 the world's highest performance 8bit processor well yes the 16bit registers and the same execution unit indeed was used but what is not said is that by crippling the bus interface to 8bit the chip lost half of its performance in any case the 888 attracted IBM's engineers and they selected this CPU for the model 5150 to be launched in 1981 which is known as the original IBM PC IBM chose the 888 over the similar but Superior 86 because Intel offered a better price for the former and could provide more units and the 8080 8's 8bit bus reduced the cost of the rest of the computer the 8088 was also used in the succeeding model 5160 which is also known as the IBM PC XT or simply XT and that's when IBM was setting the standard for PCs using Intel's x86 architecture I have here in my collection a variety of those processors from the '70s and 80s starting with the Intel 404 on the lower left the 4040 the 808 the 8080 and 885 and finally the 886 the 888 is here in the middle section on the right you see some 88 versions produced by AMD and Fujitsu don't forget that these CPUs did not have a dedicated floating Point Unit at the time for such tasks a dedicated mask or processor chip like this intel 8087 was needed I recently purchased some ceramic dip versions of the 888 and one of them will be decapped today okay let's do this all right so in order to Decap the chip I will use my vice and insert the 888 in this fashion and you see that this uh dip package has two ceramic layers and in between there's this kind of a glue and I will try to heat this up and with a screwdriver try to break it open Okay so let's squeeze this in not too deep so that I have still access to the middle layer and yeah let's start the heat gun I will start with 500° [Music] [Music] okay and off went the lid [Music] [Music] [Music] okay folks let's conclude the Intel 888 is not only a landmark in the CPU history but also basically the processor grandfather of all personal computers that we know and it boosted the standardization of PCS via the x86 architecture of Intel by reducing the external bus to 8bit Intel already introduced in 1979 a means to lower the cost and hence address Budget market segments Intel successfully continued this approach with a 386 but they did not call it the 388 but the 386 SX having only 16bit external bus the 486 SX also existed but this version lost its on FPU which was integrated as of the 486 line even today lowcost segments are addressed with the Intel celon CPUs all right thanks for watching don't forget to subscribe and hang on for further CPU related videos on my channel

Channel: CPU Duke

Views: 5,578

Keywords: CPU, microelectronics, microprocessors, processors, CPUDuke, microcircuits, collecting, die, transistors, Intel, semiconductor, silicon, digital, retro, siliconart, chipart, cpuart, funwithchips, microscope, microscopic, 4bit, 8bit, 16bit, 32bit, 486, 386, SX, x86, FPU, floatingpoint, math, AMD, Fujitsu, Celeron, technology, anniversary, IBM, PC, XT, 5150, 5160, databus

Id: k9n1JC8ouyM

Length: 9min 39sec (579 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 01 2024