This may be misleading: the 80386 introduced flat address space and paged virtual memory _in the Intel world_, not in general. At the time it was introduced, linear / flat address space was the norm for 32 bit architectures, with examples such as the VAX, the MC68K, the NS32032 and the new RISC processors. The IBM/360 was also (mostly) linear.
So with the 80386, Intel finally abandoned their failed approach of segmented address spaces and joined the linear rest of the world. (Of course the 386 is technically still segmented, but let's ignore that).
And they made their new CPU conceptually compatible with the linear address space of the big computers of the time, the VAXens and IBM mainframes and Unix workstations. Not the "little" ones.
This may be misleading: the 80386 introduced flat address space and paged virtual memory _in the Intel world_, not in general. At the time it was introduced, linear / flat address space was the norm for 32 bit architectures, with examples such as the VAX, the MC68K, the NS32032 and the new RISC processors. The IBM/360 was also (mostly) linear.
So with the 80386, Intel finally abandoned their failed approach of segmented address spaces and joined the linear rest of the world. (Of course the 386 is technically still segmented, but let's ignore that).
And they made their new CPU conceptually compatible with the linear address space of the big computers of the time, the VAXens and IBM mainframes and Unix workstations. Not the "little" ones.