During the eighties there was a joint research project of Intel with Siemens, for a new processor architecture named BiiN.
For some reason, the BiiN project was terminated in 1988 and Siemens was not interested any more in it.
On the other hand Intel decided to not scrap the results of that project and they introduced the 80960 series based on the architecture formerly known as BiiN.
The commercial name 80960 was derived from their previous 8096 series of 16-bit microcontrollers, so 80960 was initially presented as higher-performance 32-bit replacement for the 8096 series, which was used in various embedded computers.
One interesting feature of BiiN was that it was the first monolithic CPU with an atomic fetch-and-add instruction (first used in 1981 in the NYU Ultracomputer project).
The 80960 inherited the atomic fetch-and-add from BiiN and then Intel added it to 80486, under the XADD mnemonic, together with the atomic compare-and-swap taken from IBM 370 and Motorola 68020 (CMPXCHG).
The applications for which 80960 was best known, like I2O and laser printers, happened significantly later than its initial introduction.
For some reason, the BiiN project was terminated in 1988 and Siemens was not interested any more in it.
On the other hand Intel decided to not scrap the results of that project and they introduced the 80960 series based on the architecture formerly known as BiiN.
The commercial name 80960 was derived from their previous 8096 series of 16-bit microcontrollers, so 80960 was initially presented as higher-performance 32-bit replacement for the 8096 series, which was used in various embedded computers.
One interesting feature of BiiN was that it was the first monolithic CPU with an atomic fetch-and-add instruction (first used in 1981 in the NYU Ultracomputer project).
The 80960 inherited the atomic fetch-and-add from BiiN and then Intel added it to 80486, under the XADD mnemonic, together with the atomic compare-and-swap taken from IBM 370 and Motorola 68020 (CMPXCHG).
The applications for which 80960 was best known, like I2O and laser printers, happened significantly later than its initial introduction.