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The Intel 8088 processor launched 44 years ago today, and helped to start the PC revolution by John Callaham If you are working on a PC today, there's a good chance that it's using a chip that can trace its roots down to the Intel 8088 processor. That chip launched 44 years ago today, on June 1, 1979. However, its true impact on the PC industry would have to wait for a while longer. First, let's look at the hardware specs of the Intel 8088, via the company's own website. Clock speed - 8 MHz, 4.77 MHz Manufacturing process - 3-micron Number of transistors - 29,000 Addressable Memory - 64 kb Bus Speed - 8 MHz, 4.77 MHz The Intel 8088 is actually a slightly different version of the Intel 8086, which launched a year before in June 1978. Both chips had 16-bit registers. The main difference between the two CPUs is that while the 8086 had a 16-bit data bus, the 8088 only had an 8-bit data bus. This small difference would be the key to the wider use of the 8088 later. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the personal computer industry was just starting. Companies like Apple, Commodore, Tandy, and even video game console maker Atari were releasing their own PC models. IBM, known previously for its huge mainframe computers meant for large corporations, decided to get in on this new market and launch a PC of its own. Inside of designing its first PC completely on its own, as it had with its previous computers, IBM contacted third parties to help make its first PC product. The reasoning was that IBM could quickly put together a PC and put it on the market faster than if it did everything in-house. IBM's site stated: They went to Microsoft for the operating system (QDOS, renamed PC-DOS and later sold by Microsoft as MS-DOS) and to Intel for its 8088 processor. They chose an existing monitor from IBM Japan and a dot-matrix printer by Epson. Only the keyboard and the system unit itself were new designs from IBM. So why did IBM choose the Intel 8088 processor to be in its first PC? There's actually some debate on this subject. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates stated in a 1997 interview with PC Magazine that he and fellow co-founder Paul Allen actually pushed IBM to use a 16-bit processor. However, David Bradley, who helped to put together the first IBM PC for the company, tells a different story in an article he wrote for Byte in 1990. He offered four main reasons for picking a processor like the Intel 8088: 1. The 64K-byte address limit had to be overcome. This requirement meant that we had to use a 16-bit microprocessor. 2. The processor and its peripherals had to be available immediately. There was no time for new LSI chip development, and manufacturing lead times meant that quantities had to be available right away. 3. We couldn't afford a long learning period; we had to use technology we were familiar with. And we needed a rich set of support chips—we wanted a system with a DMA controller, an interrupt controller, timers, and parallel ports. 4. There had to be both an operating system and applications software available for the processor. So why did IBM ultimately pick the 8088 over the 8086? Bradley said that the final choice was due to a familiar reason: it helped make the PC cheaper to produce: We chose the 8088 because of its 8-bit data bus. The smaller bus saved money in the areas of RAM, ROM, and logic for the simple system. The first IBM PC launched on August 12, 1981 with a price of $1,565. It quickly became a sales success and led not only to more IBM PC models, but also PCs made by other companies that were clones of the IBM product. They all used versions of Intel's x86 chip line. Today, the 13th Gen Intel Core processors that the company is currently selling can trace their roots back to that original 8088 model. The company is currently getting ready to launch its next chip architecture, Meteor Lake, and its also in early, early development of a 64-bit only CPU. It tried to get away from that x86 architecture with its server-themed 64-bit chip Itanium, in the 2000s but it failed to make a significant impact. However, even future Intel chips will owe a debt to the Intel 8088 that launched 44 years ago.

The IBM PC-XT launched 40 years ago today but it got competition from the Compaq Portable by John Callaham IBM PC-XT In 1981, the first personal computer desktop was launched by IBM. However, the IBM PC had some limitations, such as the lack of a hard drive and too few expansion ports. 40 years ago today, on March 8, 1983, the company came out with its next-generation desktop computer, the IBM PC-XT. One of the two big hardware improvements in the IBM PC-XT was an increase in expansion slots from five in the original IBM PC to eight in the new PC. This allowed for owners to add more hardware, like an additional floppy disk drive or another hard drive. Speaking of which, the second big hardware improvement was the addition of a Seagate 10 MB hard drive. This allowed the IBM PC-XT to boot up the PC-DOS 2.0 operating system from the hard drive, rather than rely on using a floppy disk. The PC did come with a 5.25-inch floppy disk drive as well. Later models were sold without the included hard drive. Unfortunately, the company decided that the IBM PC-XT would get the Intel 8088 microprocessor, which is the same processor that shipped with the original IBM PC a year and a half earlier. The IBM PC-XT originally was sold with 128KB of memory, but later versions had 256 KB and finally 640 KB of memory on the motherboard. You had to purchase the monitor for this PC as an accessory or have it bundled with the computer. You can find out a lot more about the hardware specs on the PC from the DOS Days website. The original IBM PC had a starting price of $1,565 when it launched in 1981 according to PC Mag. By contrast, the price for the first model of the IBM PC-XT was a whopping $7,545, thanks to that included hard drive. That's part of the reason why the company sold later versions without the hard drive to make it more affordable. One model with just a single floppy drive and a bundled monochrome monitor sold for £1,736 in the UK, or about $2,058. By the time the IBM PC-XT was released, other companies were coming out with their own personal computers that were IBM PC-compatible. One of them was released around the same time as the IBM PC-XT, the Compaq Portable. It was the first PC in what turned out to be a long line of Compaq personal computers. Compaq Portable It had a built-in 9-inch green phosphor CRT, but the original lacked the built-in hard drive that the IBM PC-XT had included. Another thing about the Compaq Portable is that while its BIOS was coded from scratch, it was made to run any apps that the IBM BIOS could. It even came with its own carrying case (hence the "Portable" in the title) When it launched, the Compaq Portable cost over $3,000, but according to ZDNet, the PC still sold about 53,000 units in its first year. More importantly, it started the "IBM PC compatible" era, as more personal computers from other companies soon joined in to compete directly with IBM. It was the true start of the PC industry that continues to this day. What was your first PC, and when did you acquire it? Let us know in the comments below.