> The first 32bit intel processor was introduced around '88 -89'.
> the 486. It wasn't really fully utilized for 5 years. (I know Unix
Not true. The iapx432 came out in 1983 or there about. It was not a
commercial success, being many years ahead of the technology. It had a
fascinating architecture, with bit-level addressing and the most amazingly
CISC structure I've ever seen. Think of something designed to run Multics
as its assembly language and you've got some feel for the architecture. It
was also *very* expensive and ran like molasses. I wish I still had one for
my collection of old machines.
Rather closer to the mainstream, the 80386 was (still is!) a 32-bit machine
and it came out before the 486.
Paul
