(Not a question, just some thanks.)

The 8086 was the first CPU I did assembly-level coding on as a kid back in 1989. This was a full 11 years after its 1978 introduction, but PCs were really expensive back then. This was the time when 8086, 80286 and 80386 systems were all sold in parallel, at wildly different price points. The 80486 was just being introduced, too.

It's just fascinating to see what I then imagined as an immense, hyper-complex machine being reduced to a grid of transistors that sort of fit, individually visible on my 4k screen.

Another great article. In some photos we see small circles labeled as "vias" and other's show small circles as "contacts." What exactly is the difference between vias and contacts?

Thank you for the write up! I always find chip images fascinating, and especially older nodes where it’s possible to understand the whole ting if you wanted to.