The 8086 project started in May 1976 and was originally intended as a temporary substitute for the ambitious and delayed iAPX 432 project. It was an attempt to draw attention from the less-delayed 16- and 32-bit processors of other manufacturers (such as Motorola, Zilog, and National Semiconductor) and at the same time to counter the threat from the Zilog Z80 (designed by former Intel employees), which became very successful. Both the architecture and the physical chip were therefore developed rather quickly by a small group of people, and using the same basic microarchitecture elements and physical implementation techniques as employed for the slightly older 8085 (and for which the 8086 also would function as a continuation).