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The 32-Bit Revolution That Changed Everything

The Part That Changed the World

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The 32-Bit Revolution That Changed Everything

In the early 1980s, Intel was betting its future on a completely new processor architecture. But hidden inside the company was a small, unofficial project that many engineers considered the less exciting option.

Instead of starting over, a handful of designers asked a different question:

What if the future could run the past?

This is the story of the Intel 80386, the 32-bit processor that broke through the infamous 640 KB barrier, introduced flat memory, virtual memory, and true multitasking to the PC world, and quietly became the foundation of modern computing.

You'll discover:

Why the 8086 and 80286 were reaching their limits
The segmented memory model programmers hated
The hidden Intel project that almost never shipped
How John Crawford and his team designed the 80386
Why IBM hesitated while Compaq moved first
How Windows 3.0 unlocked the true power of the 386
Why the architecture behind the 386 still influences computers today

The 80386 wasn't just a faster processor.

It changed what personal computers were capable of becoming.

20 Comments

@David_Best 1 month ago (edited)

As the marketing manager for the iAPX-432 (8800) at the time, I can emphatically say that the 286 was never considered a stepchild. That idea is BS. Yes, there were alternate variations of the 286 architecture being debated. But the strategy to have a logical progression from 086 to 186 to 286 to 386 was all part of the planned evolution of the 086 line by early 1980. The succession of the model lineup was previewed publicly as part of the "Crush Motorola" marketing program that began in late 1980.

@LeRoyPick 1 month ago

An important lesson in development: any (every?) time you "start over" and don't support the installed base, you give your customers an excuse to look elsewhere, essentially giving your competitors a free shot at taking your customers away. If you do the reverse and give your customers a new capability while maintaining support and compatibility for the old, that customer will likely stay with you, forcing your competitor to develop a feature or capability so compelling that it is worth the sacrifice of switching.

@donaldsutton4350 3 weeks ago

Going from 16 bits to 32 bits was such a huge step forward at the time. I had no idea at the time that I would eventually need or have a 64-bit system on my desk.

@copperchatter6890 1 month ago

Thank you for making an effort on the audio.
Interesting content, thank you.

@Sildavias 1 month ago

The compaq 386 in the picture is MY Compaq 386 with 16Mhz and 16M of RAM with copro 387. It is working today! In Spain ;-) I love that heavy computer.

@sigcrazy7 1 month ago

All these historic visuals in this video are causing my nostalgia register to stack overflow.

@hstrinzel 1 month ago

WITHOUT the 80386, Intel would NEVER have succeeded like they did. The whole X86 line would have ended and been clobbered by the ARM and 68K people.

@martinenglish6641 1 month ago

Great history piece. Thank you.

@awuma 1 month ago (edited)

Excellent video. The significance of the Compaq 386 Deskpro is well recognised here with respect to the 386, but its ISA bus also torpedoed the proprietary IBM Microchannel bus and in the end IBM's control of the PC ecosystem. My experience with the Sun 386i was very much dependent on its use of the 8086 compatibility mode. Sun could have taken over the PC software environment instead of Microsoft, but they cancelled the 386i and not extending its software to the standard set by Compaq... one of the greatest missed opportunities in history.

@edgeeffect 1 month ago

That's the first time I've heard IAPX described as "architectural elegance".... I've always preferred the term "over engineered garbage" myself. ;)

@lostbrit2 1 month ago

In 1986 a 32-bit desktop processor was introduced that was about 2x faster than the 80386 @ 16Mhz and ~7x faster than a 68000 @ 7Mhz while using 15-30x less power.

By 1989 the cpu (v3) would be more that 3x faster and have a full GUI preemptive multitasking OS with none of these crazy memory issues just full 32-bit addressing. In that same year Intel release the 80486 which was 3x slower than the ARMv3 (Drystones).

At the time it was largely ignored,

However, probably have one of it's descendants in your pocket right now. The 1986 version was the Acorn RISC machine v2, you know it today as ARM, Apple M-series or A-Series.

@michealmorrow1481 1 month ago

Those memory segments were so much larger than those on IBM 360/370 assembler. The memory segments there were only 4K. They were working in luxury.

@frozendude707 1 month ago

As a matter of semantics, 64-bit was not called x86-64 during the first generations of CPUs and software that supported 64-bit (circa 2002~2006), instead it was most often called AMD64 or simply 64-bit extensions, and the later adoption that Intel licensed from AMD was called EM64T.