Home > Computing Happy 42nd Anniversary to the Original Intel 8086 and the x86 Architecture Happy 40th birthday to one of the most important CPUs ever built -- and the beginning of the PC revolution.

IBM ‘s selection of the 8088, an 8086 variant, to power its PC in the early ’80s gave the x86 architecture tremendous momentum and helped it become an industry standard that persists today.

To mark the 40-year anniversary of the Intel 8086 that powered the first IBM PC, Intel has announced the Intel Core i7-8086K Limited Edition processor, its first CPU that can hit 5GHz in turbo mode.

Forty-two years ago today, Intel launched the original 8086 microprocessor -- the grandfather of every x86 CPU ever built, including the ones we use now. This, it must be noted, is more or less ...