The Intel 8086 is a landmark 16‑bit microprocessor introduced by Intel in 1978. It was the first in the x86 family and established many architectural conventions that continue to influence modern personal computing. With a hybrid internal design—featuring 16‑bit registers and a 16‑bit arithmetic logic unit (ALU) paired with a 20‑bit external address bus—the 8086 could directly address 1 megabyte of memory, a significant leap over its 8‑bit predecessors.
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