Intel celebrates the 40th anniversary of the historic 8086 processor at Computex 2018 with a special edition CPU-- the Core i7-8086K, an 8th generation chip able to reach speeds of up to 5Ghz without overclocking.
The anniversary is actually a dual one, since Chipzilla is also celebrating 50 years in the business. However the 8086 is arguably more important, since the processor was the first running on x86 architecture, making it a chief reason as to why Intel is the giant it is today. Of course the Core i7-8086 is a bit more sophisticated than the original 16-chip 8086, being a Coffee Lake-based chip with a 6-core/12-thread part with a 4GHz base clock, 5GHz boost clock, and 12MB of L3 cache.
"The Intel Core i7-8086K Limited Edition processor is more than just a commemorative processor," the company says. "It celebrates Intel’s legacy of industry-leading performance by featuring our first 6-core, 12-thread processor with integrated graphics in an 1151-pin package supporting a 64-bit instruction set. The Intel Core i7-8086K processor is also the first Intel processor to deliver up to 5.0 GHz single-core turbo frequency out of the box, fully unlocked for overclocking."
Computex also sees the reveal of another Intel chip offering-- a monster single-socket 5GHz 28-core CPU described as able to chew through the Cinebench benchmark "in a few seconds." The mystery chip currently lacks a name, and while Intel is still to provide details such as process technology or architecture it does say it should ship as early as Q4 2018.
As for the Core i7-8086K, it is available in limited quantities from 8 June, the same day the 8086 processor debuted 40 years ago.