jfid – Pat Gelsinger, the current CEO of Intel, is an engineer with a long and illustrious career history at the chip giant. One of the significant products he contributed to designing was the 386, Intel’s first 32-bit processor, when he was just 24 years old.
It was later discovered that Gelsinger had quietly embedded his initials in the design of the 386 processor, visible on all processors produced between 1985 and 2007.
The existence of Gelsinger’s initials was uncovered by computer historian Ken Shirriff, who re-examined the design of the 386 processor in a recent article on his blog. One of his findings was the presence of the initials “PG,” an abbreviation for Pat Gelsinger.
“And here are Pat Gelsinger’s initials in the core of the 386 processor, in two places,” tweeted Shirriff on X (formerly Twitter). He also referenced a paper on the design of the 386 processor written by Gelsinger.
The initials of chip engineers are often found in the designs of their processors. However, this is the first time a designer’s initials have been found on the iconic 386 processor.
Introduced in 1986, the 386 processor was a crucial product for Intel as it marked the transition to 32-bit architecture. The processor had 275,000 transistors and was produced using a 1.5-micrometer (1,500 nm) fabrication process.
