Computing · 1981

IBM PC

An open, cloneable design that became the PC standard.

IBM's Personal Computer used an Intel 8088 and Microsoft's DOS, with off-the-shelf parts. Clones by Compaq and others followed, and the 'IBM compatible' became the dominant platform.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

x86 (Intel 8086) 1978
Personal computer 1977

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Computation per constant dollar, 1850-2006 Latest: 7.3B million units of computer power per 2006 $ (2003) Source: Nordhaus 2007, Two Centuries of Productivity Growth in Computing, J. Econ. Hist. 67(1), Table 6

Transistors per microprocessor Latest: 58.2B transistors (2021) Source: Our World in Data