Intel 80286

The Intel 80286 (officially named the iAPX 286) is a x86 16-bit central processing unit that was introduced by Intel on the 1st of February, 1982. Initially released in 6 and 8MHz editions, it subsequently scaled up to 20MHz, and was widely used in IBM PC compatible computers during the mid 1980s to early 1990s.

The 80286 performs at twice the speed of its predecessor (the Intel 8086) per clock cycle, and is able to address up to 16 megabytes of RAM, in contrast to the 1MB the 8086 can work with. On DOS machines this additional ram capability can only be utilised via extended memory emulation, however few 286-based computers ever saw more than a megabyte of ram.

Despite their market popularity, few computers with a 80286 CPU still remain in use today.

The 286's successor was the 32-bit Intel 80386.