Intel 4004
cpu
Inventors
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Microprocessors
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By
Mary
Bellis
In November, 1971, a company called
Intel publicly introduced the world's first single chip microprocessor,
the Intel 4004 (U.S. Patent #3,821,715), invented by Intel
engineers Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff, and Stan Mazor. After the invention
of integrated
circuits revolutionized computer design, the only place to go was down
-- in size that is. The Intel 4004 chip took the integrated circuit down
one step further by placing all the parts that made a computer think (i.e.
central processing unit, memory, input and output controls) on one small
chip. Programming intelligence into inanimate objects had now become possible.
The History
of Intel
In 1968, Bob
Noyce and Gordon Moore were two unhappy engineers working for the Fairchild
Semiconductor Company who decided to quit and create their own company
at a time when many Fairchild employees were leaving to create start-ups.
People like Noyce and Moore were nicknamed the "Fairchildren".
Bob Noyce typed himself a one page
idea of what he wanted to do with his new company, and that was enough
to convince San Francisco venture capitalist Art Rock to back Noyce's and
Moore's new venture. Rock raised $2.5 million dollars in less than 2 days.
The name "Moore Noyce" was already
trademarked by a hotel chain, so the two founders decided upon the name
"Intel" for their new company, a shortened version of "Integrated Electronics".
Intel's first money making product
was the 3101 Schottky bipolar 64-bit static random access memory (SRAM)
chip. In late 1969, a potential client from Japan called Busicom, asked
to have twelve custom chips designed. Separate chips for keyboard scanning,
display control, printer control and other functions for a Busicom-manufactured
calculator.
Intel did not have the manpower for
the job but they did have the brainpower to come up with a solution. Intel
engineer, Ted Hoff decided that Intel could build one chip to do the work
of twelve. Intel and Busicom agreed and funded the new programmable, general-purpose
logic chip.
Federico Faggin headed the design
team along with Ted Hoff and Stan Mazor, who wrote the software for the
new chip. Nine months later, a revolution was born. At 1/8th inch wide
by 1/6th inch long and consisting of 2,300 MOS (metal oxide semiconductor)
transistors,
the baby chip had as much power as the ENIAC,
which had filled 3,000 cubic feet with 18,000 vacuum tubes.
Cleverly, Intel decided to buy back
the design and marketing rights to the 4004 from Busicom for $60,000. The
next year Busicom went bankrupt, they never produced a product using the
4004. Intel followed a clever marketing plan to encourage the development
of applications for the 4004 chip, leading to its widespread use within
months.
The Intel
4004
Intel
4004 - The Chip
The 4004 was the world's first universal
microprocessor. In the late 1960s, many scientists had discussed the possibility
of a computer on a chip, but nearly everyone felt that integrated circuit
technology was not yet ready to support such a chip. Intel's Ted Hoff felt
differently; he was the first person to recognize that the new silicon-gated
MOS technology might make a single-chip CPU (central processing unit) possible.
Hoff and the Intel team developed
such an architecture with just over 2,300 transistors in an area of only
3 by 4 millimetres. With its 4-bit CPU, command register, decoder, decoding
control, control monitoring of machine commands and interim register, the
4004 was one heck of a little invention. Today's 64-bit microprocessors
are still based on similar designs, and the microprocessor is still the
most complex mass-produced product ever with more than 5.5 million transistors
performing hundreds of millions of calculations each second - numbers that
are sure to be outdated fast.
The Pioneer 10 spacecraft used
the 4004 microprocessor. It was launched on March 2, 1972 and was the first
spacecraft and microprocessor to enter the Asteroid Belt.
Next
Chapter > Alan
Shugart and IBM - The "Floppy" Disk
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