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The PC platform is an open architecture system that was originally designed by IBM in 1980. IBM's PC 5150 is the progenitor (though in no way representative of iterative designs like the desktops and laptops you may be familiar with today). The success of the PC architecture in the 1980s prompted Intel to iterate on its x86 processors, which is why this page is called '''Intel CPUs'''.
A comprehensive history of the PC can be found on [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/IBMPersonalComputer TVTropes], but a good summary is that almost every component of the 5150 was off-the-shelf (i.e. parts that IBM didn't make themselves or sign an exclusivity agreement for others to use). IBM hoped that if clones popped up, they could sue them using the firmware in the BIOS, which they had [[Licensing|copyright]] over. However, Compaq came up with a replacement firmware based solely on documentation from IBM that they made publicly available, which they defended as a clean-room reimplementation. As a result, IBM lost control over the platform. The next major iteration would come from Intel in 1995 called ATX.
Sometime in the 90s, a speedup was found in PC emulation that could run software near-natively. This became the basis for [[hypervisors]], which are different from conventional emulators listed here since they require the host architecture to be at the very least x86-compatible.
==Emulators==
