x86 en · PROPN
Etymology
The x functions as a wildcard; the processors immediately succeeding the original 8086 and using the same architecture (with progressively greater expansions) also had names ending in 86 (the 80186, 80286, 80386, and 80486; Intel shifted away from this numerical nomenclature after the 80486, but other manufacturers of x86 processors continued the series with -586- and -686-branded processors).
Meanings
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Any of a family of instruction set architectures based on that used by the Intel 8086 microprocessor. ▸ Specifically, the 32-bit version of the x86 instruction set architecture.
The x86 version of Windows 7 only supports a maximum of 4 GiB of RAM; 64-bit Windows can support a lot more.
- (rare) Any of a family of instruction set architectures based on that used by the Intel 8086 microprocessor. ▸ Specifically, the original, 16-bit version of the x86 instruction set architecture.
Hyponyms
i386 · x86-16 (16-bit x86) · x64 · x86 64 · x86-64 (64-bit x86) · x86-32 (32-bit x86) · AMD64 · IA-32
Relateds
MMX · SSE3 · SSE2 · SSE · 3DNow! · SSE4 · SSSE3 · x87