The Intel i860 (also known as 80860) was a RISC microprocessor from Intel, first released in 1989. The i860 was one of Intel's first attempts at an entirely new, high-end instruction set since the failed Intel i432 from the 1980s. It was released with considerable fanfare, slightly obscuring the earlier Intel i960 which was successful in some niches of embedded systems, and which many considered to be a better design. The i860 never achieved commercial success and the project was terminated in the mid-1990s.
Andy Grove blamed the i860's failure in the marketplace on Intel being stretched too thin:
| “ | We now had two very powerful chips that we were introducing at just about the same time: the 486, largely based on CISC technology and compatible with all the PC software, and the i860, based on RISC technology, which was very fast but compatible with nothing. We didn't know what to do. So we introduced both, figuring we'd let the marketplace decide. ... our equivocation caused our customers to wonder what Intel really stood for, the 486 or i860? | ” |
| — Andy Grove, |
Read more about Intel I860: Technical Features, Performance (problems), Versions and Applications
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