Intel 80386

The intel 80386 is a single chip processor ancestral to intel's [[Pentium microprocessor. It was faster than its immediate predecessor, the intel 80286. It added demand-paged virtual memory.

Like earlier CPUs in this lineage, the intel 4004, intel 8008, intel 8080, intel 8086, intel 80186 and intel 80286, it had no native ability to process floating point arithmetic. Like the intel 8086, intel 80186 and intel 80286 floating point operations triggered an interrupt. If the computer had a dedicated floating point co-processor, the intel 8087, intel 80187 and intel 80287, the CPU would pause, and wait for the co-processor to complete the operation. If the computer did not have a dedicated floating point co-processor, an interrupt handling routine would interpret the floating point operations.