AMD 80386 microprocessor family

CPU » 80386 family » AMD

In 1987 Intel cancelled 1982 technical exchange agreement between Intel and AMD. As a result of this cancellation AMD didn't get rights to produce 80386 microprocessors. In 1987 AMD began long arbitration process that lasted 5 years, and ended only in 1992. In the meantime AMD used their rights to use Intel's microcode, granted them by 1976 cross-license agreement (extended in 1982), to reverse-engineer Intel 80386 microprocessor and 80287 co-processor. The process of reverse-engineering of Intel 80386 started in 1988 and lasted more than a year. In the result AMD came up with more efficient microprocessor that still used Intel's microcode. AMD 80386 family was released in 1990. In 1991, AMD introduced 80386SX microprocessors.

Production parts

AMD A80386DXL-20

20 MHz
132-pin ceramic PGA

AMD 80386DXL was a fully static microprocessor, object-code and pin-compatible with 80386DX CPU. The DXL processors had lower power consumption than Intel 80386DX CPUs. Power consumption could be reduced even further by reducing CPU frequency. If necessary, the CPU could be stopped completely without loosing the content of CPU registers. In this mode maximum power consumption of the CPU was less than 0.001 Watt.