Where does this come from, and can I check it?

Intel kept the 8086 instruction set alive through decades of chips so old software would keep working. The figure is taken from Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

Is this really a technology fact?

Yes. It sits on the Technology shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.

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The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.

Mondo Knows Facts

x86 processors still run code written in 1978

Intel kept the 8086 instruction set alive through decades of chips so old software would keep working The 8086 shipped in 1978 as a 16-bit design, and the family later stretched to 32 bits with the 386 in 1985 and to 64 bits with AMD's Opteron in 2003. Each new chip starts in a mode that behaves like its ancestors, which is how a modern machine can still run an old program. The price is a dense, irregular instruction encoding that designers must decode at great speed. It sits in Mondo's technology collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

Britannica

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

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Technology trivia

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Tags: processors, intel, compatibility

x86 processors still run code written in 1978: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: Intel kept the 8086 instruction set alive through decades of chips so old software would keep working. The figure is taken from Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a technology fact?: Yes. It sits on the Technology shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.