The 8086 didn’t bring in so much revenue in and of itself, but it had a broad ripple effect. My division sold design aids—software development systems—for systems using Intel microprocessors. Though we were growing like crazy, we were still dependent on customers’ choosing Intel’s microchip for their products. Once Intel got its foot in the door with the 8086, we’d get EPROM [the programmable, read-only-memory chip invented at Intel in 1971] and peripheral and controller chip contracts as well. In total, they might be worth ten times the original sale. But if the 8086 went away, my systems
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