The Intel 8088 (and its big brother 8086) processor was among the first microprocessors to implement (instruction) prefetching in hardware, which [Ken Shirriff] has analyzed based on die images of ...

Along the way, new instructions were added, but the core of the x86 instruction set was retained. And a lot of effort was spent making the same instructions faster and faster.

Hardware Industry intel x86 Intel releases X86S instruction set version 1.2, killing multiple 16-bit and 32-bit features X86S gives Intel's x86 a much-needed slim down for the 64-bit age By Zo ...