The definition of x86The x86 series of processors
includes the Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium
III, Celeron, and Athlon as well as the 786, 686, 586,
486, 386, 286, 8086, 8088, etc. It is an exceptionally
popular design (by far the most popular
CISC series) in spite of the fact
that even its fastest model is significantly slower than the
assorted RISC processors. Many
different OSes run on machines built
around x86 processors, including
MS-DOS,
Windows
3.1, Windows '95,
Windows '98,
Windows ME,
Windows NT,
Windows 2000,
Windows CE,
Windows XP,
GEOS,
Linux,
Solaris,
OpenBSD,
NetBSD,
FreeBSD,
Mac OS X,
OS/2,
BeOS,
CP/M, etc. A couple
different companies produce x86 processors, but the bulk of them are produced
by Intel. It is expected that this processor will
eventually be completely replaced by the
Merced, but the Merced
development schedule is somewhat behind. Also, it should be noted that the
Pentium III processor has stirred some controversy by
including a "fingerprint" that will enable individual
computer usage of web pages etc. to be accurately tracked.
|
|