Here’s a rough breakdown of how much faster today’s typical PC CPU is compared to the original Intel 8086 (introduced in 1978):
Key takeaways:
- By clock speed alone, today’s CPUs are ≈800× faster.
- Accounting for far higher IPC, instruction‑throughput is on the order of 200,000× to 1,000,000× higher.
- In real‑world benchmarks (which also reflect microarchitectural advances), you’ll see roughly 500,000×–600,000× improvement.
So — conservatively — a typical modern PC CPU is hundreds of thousands of times faster than the original Intel 8086.
| Metric | Intel 8086 (≈1978) | Modern Desktop CPU (e.g. Intel Core i7‑13700K, 2024) | Speed‑up Factor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clock frequency | 4.77 MHz | ~4 GHz (4,000 MHz) | ~840× |
| Instructions per cycle (IPC) | ~0.5 | ~4 | ~8× |
| Raw MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second) | ~0.25 | ~50,000 | ~200,000× |
| Dhrystone MIPS (DMIPS) | ~0.1 | ~100,000 | ~1,000,000× |
| Real‑world single‑threaded benchmark (e.g. Geekbench 6 single‑core) | ~0.05 | ~30,000 | ~600,000× |
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