IBM 386SLC

It included power-management capabilities and an 8KB internal CPU cache, which enabled it to yield comparable performance to 386DX processors of the same clock speed, which were considerably more expensive.

Clock-for-clock, it was substantially faster than the similarly-named Cyrix part, yielding performance broadly comparable to a similarly-clocked 486SX in the 16-bit applications of its day.

However, its narrow 16-bit bus, limited memory addressing capability (16 MB) and lack of on-chip FPU would prove to be major disadvantages under the new generation of 32-bit operating systems (such as Windows 95) that would become popular in following years.

IBM's adoption of Cyrix cores for their self-manufactured CPUs, very restricted release of information regarding the earlier generations, and policy of only printing cryptic in-house part numbers on first-generation Blue Lightning chips rather than any easily recognised family name has led to some confusion amongst the retro/low-end PC community as to their actual name.

As a result the first-generation BLs are often commonly referred to as "486DLC" (and 486DLC2, DLC3/4) CPUs, a logical and 386-alike progression from the 16-bit SLC models - even though IBM themselves do not appear to have used that name in any official materials, simply calling them "Blue Lightning" or shortening the name to "486BL".