Intel 4004 is the first 4-bit microprocessor introduced by Intel in 1971. After that Intel introduced its first 8-bit microprocessor 8088 in 1972.

These microprocessors could not last long as general-purpose microprocessors due to their design and performance limitations.

In 1974, Intel introduced the first general purpose 8-bit microprocessor 8080 and this is the first step of Intel towards the development of advanced microprocessor.

After 8080, Intel launched microprocessor 8085 with a few more features added to its architecture, and it is considered to be the first functionally complete microprocessor.

The main limitations of the 8-bit microprocessors were their low speed, low memory capacity, limited number of general purpose registers and a less powerful instruction set .

To overcome these limitations Intel moves from 8-bit microprocessor to 16-bit microprocessor.

In the family of 16-bit microprocessors, Intel's 8086 was the first one introduced in 1978 .

8086 microprocessor has a much powerful instruction set along with the architectural developments, which imparted substantial programming flexibility and improvement over the 8-bit microprocessor.