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23. 8086 and 8088 CPU


  • Year 1979

  • The 8088, 8086, and 80286 are 16-bit CPUs.

  • Internal registers are 16 bits in size.

  • The 8086 is faster than the 8088 because of its 16-bit data bus; the 8088 has only an 8-bit data bus.

  • The 16-bit data bus allows you to use EVEN and ALIGN on an 8086 processor to word-align data and thus improve data-handling efficiency.

  • Memory addresses on the 8086 and 8088 refer to actual physical addresses.

  • The 8086 and 8088 have 20 address pins, and 1 megabyte of addressable memory (which is the real mode segmented memory explained later) requires addresses of 20 bits in size.

  • See also: Brief History of Microprocessors

  •   Structure 8086

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