NEC V20 Processor / CPU
8 MHz
Pin-compatible replacement for Intel 8088
In the early days of PC-compatibles, before we started building our own brand of PCs, we sold Leading Edge computers. We replaced the 8088 processor with a V20 and advertised that our Leading Edge computers were faster than those sold by ComputerLand, our primary competitor. We could prove our claim easily with benchmarking software. Not neck-snapping faster, but a few percent faster, which was enough to give us a competitive advantage. It was simply a matter of switching processors, which could not have been easier. We never revealed how we made our models faster. What we had done was not obvious because we ground the identifying info from the top of the chip, still a common industry practice to hide sources and designs. These were the earliest days of microcomputers/PCs and most competitors didn't have a clue.