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Talking to memory: Inside the Intel 8088 processor's bus interface state machine
In 1979, Intel introduced the 8088 microprocessor, a variant of the 16-bit 8086 processor. IBM's decision to use the 8088 processor in the I...
Although a four-step bus cycle may sound straightforward, its implementation uses a complicated state machine making it one of the most difficult parts of the 8088 to explain. To preempt the prefetch, the bus cycle state machine jumps back to TS, skipping over T1 through T4, and starting the desired access. Even though the state machine consists of just a handful of flip-flops and gates, it takes a noticeable area on the die due to the large 3.2 µm feature size of the 8088.
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