К1810ВМ88 (K1810VM88) The Soviet 8088: Part 1 (Does it

They are not clones but rather functional equivalents. The Soviets did very little in the way of 1:1 cloning of electronic devices; they had very good engineers, and they preferred to perform reverse engineering and developing their own versions of western ICs rather than outright cloning them. I do know that these tend to run cooler than the originals, and the microcode may also be somewhat different, although the performance per clock is extremely close to the original. I believe both of those chips were made in the Kvantor factory in Zbarazh, Ukraine. I don't know why the second chip doesn't have a factory logo on it…devices made for export typically have a Cyrillic 'E' (Э) on them or the marking "Сделано в СССР" (Made in the USSR) on them in lieu of a factory logo.

I love having one of these from an Ebay lot bought back in the day when i was doing AU scraping.

July 1991 is very, very late "soviet era". Soviet era ended with Berlin Wall in november 1989 . URSS started disintegrating in 1988 and ended christmas 1991.

This was great. I used to play Ancient Art of War when I was a kid a lot. I'm surprised at the chip heat. My 8087 in one of my XT's is insanely hot also. I thought it might be broken (dead short but still claiming it was there) but was still working. I wonder if there's any details online as to which fab process they used. NMOS maybe?

I like the white ICs. Prefer them to the Black TBH..

I know they tend to use black plastic because it blocks light, and apparently because it also helps radiate heat away from the IC more efficiently, but white does look better.