The Intel 8086 is a 16-bit microprocessor. This 16-bit designation primarily refers to the size of its internal architecture components.
Key features of the 8086 architecture include:
A 16-bit data bus.
16-bit general-purpose registers (AX, BX, CX, DX).
16-bit index and pointer registers (SI, DI, SP, BP).
16-bit segment registers (CS, DS, SS, ES).
While the 8-bit registers (AH, AL, BH, BL, etc.) exist as the high and low bytes of the 16-bit general-purpose registers, the primary register size is 16 bits.
Therefore, the size of the general-purpose registers in the 8086 microprocessor is 16 bits.