3 ms·
Some of this is quite revisionist. Intel didn't learn from 8086 mistakes when they designed the 386. They had an order of magnitude more transistors to play wit
by dboreham 2y ago
Some of this is quite revisionist. Intel didn't learn from 8086 mistakes when they designed the 386. They had an order of magnitude more transistors to play with which allowed them to implement features that weren't achievable in the 8086 time frame (1976).
If they learned from mistakes it was from the iAPX432.
Iirc hardware virtualization in x86 CPUs came after VMWare had demonstrated the concept and proven the market, using a software emulation approach.
- anyfoo 2y agoHardware virtualization with feature parity came very late. Hardware virtualization limited to real mode VMs came with the 386 itself, as the commenter you replied to mentioned. It was absolutely crucial to its success. The 286's protected mode was considered useless, more or less, because it could not coexist with DOS apps (not without severe hacks at least, stuff like resetting the entire CPU into real mode, something earlier OS/2 did by the way). Intel learned massively from that mistake and made real mode VMs a first class citizen in the 386, so I don't think it's fair to say that Intel didn't learn anything coming into the 386. Now, as I've mentioned here elsewhere, v86 had some severe warts that made it a bit painful (and that were only corrected in the Pentium and late 486s), but it worked, and it was a cornerstone feature. Which part do you think was revisionist?
- mr_toad 2y agoVMWare might have proven the market, but the concept goes back to ‘60s era mainframes.