Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!svin02!wsinpdb
From: wsinpdb@svin02.info.win.tue.nl (Paul de Bra)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.intel
Subject: Re: Pure speculation re:80586
Message-ID: <1407@svin02.info.win.tue.nl>
Date: 17 Sep 90 08:32:49 GMT
References: <3907@umbc3.UMBC.EDU> <7680003@hp-lsd.COS.HP.COM>
Organization: Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
Lines: 25

In article <7680003@hp-lsd.COS.HP.COM> paulc@hp-lsd.COS.HP.COM (Paul Carroll) writes:
>> Is it outrageous to assume that Intel may build the 80586
>> to run in the virtual 80386 mode?
...
What we need is a chip, say 80n86, which has a virtual 80n86 mode.
This would mean that if the system is running operating system A,
you can have a virtual operating system B running on it, or vice versa,
and both will see a real 80n86 processor.

So running DOS under Unix would yield a true 80n86 dos session for
instance (but you probably won't want to run dos on such a machine anymore).

If this is too difficult (wouldn't surprise me), now that we already
have an 80386 and 80486 I would even settle for an 80n86 which offered
virtual 80(n-1)86 capabilities. My first hope for the 80486 was that it
might offer a virtual 80386 mode, or even only a virtual 80286, but
Intel obviously didn't think that was important, though many people have
expressed the need for this.

If a new chip offers nothing more than just a higher speed, many users are
not going to care, as what is available now is more than fast enough for
most of us.

Paul.
(debra@research.att.com)