I've ordered an 8088 so I can compare the internal circuitry of the chips. They should be mostly the same, except that the 8088 has an 8-bit data bus externally and has 4 bytes of prefetch buffer instead of 6.
I've always wanted a "visual 6502" style emulation of the original IBM PC, and a high-resolution die photo is the first step. Cycle-accurate emulation of the 8088 is fiendishly difficult thanks to the complex interactions between the EU and BIU.
My guess is that the prefetch buffer is always 6 bytes but the 8088 fetches instructions more slowly and never fills it past 4 instructions
I think they're probably the same die, the thing to look for is whether there's a bonding difference
Very unlikely. The 8088 was developed after the 8086, and there are more pin differences including m/io inverting to io/m.
I’ve only done it with the 6502 and Z80, but the 8086 shouldn’t be too much harder. There are plenty of resources available online for those two chips that you could adapt!
http://tech.mattmillman.com/projects/8od/
http://www.s100computers.com/My System Pages/8086 Board/8086 CPU Board.htm
Will wait for this article!