In October 1990, Intel released the 80386SL, which was basically an 855,000 transistor version of the 386SX processor, with cache, bus, and memory controllers, ISA compatibility and power management circuitry. It added a special system management mode (SMM), in which the BIOS could more easily perform power management and other functions without requiring OS support. The 386SL was the first chip specifically made for portable computers. |
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