What is Intel 80286?
| PROCESSOR SPECIFICATIONS | ||
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| Manufacturer: | Intel | |
| Model: | 80286 | |
| Year: | 1982 | |
| Transistors: | 134,000 | |
| Microns: | 1.5µ | |
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A 16-bit, 134,000 transistor processor capable of addressing up to 16 MB of RAM. In addition to the increased physical memory support, this chip is able to work with virtual memory, thereby allowing much for expandability. The 286 was the first "real" processor. It introduced the concept of protected mode. This is the ability to multitask, having different programs run separately but at the same time. This ability was not taken advantage of by DOS, but future Operating Systems, such as Windows, could play with this new feature. On the the drawbacks of this ability, though, was that while it could switch from real mode to protected mode (real mode was intended to make it backwards compatible with the 8088's), it could not switch back to real mode without a warm reboot. This chip was used by IBM in its Advanced Technology PC/AT and was used in a lot of IBM-compatibles. It ran at 8, 10, and 12.5 MHz, but later editions of the chip ran as high as 20 MHz. While these chips are considered paperweights today, they were rather revolutionary for the time period. |
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