4/21/2021 0 Comments Evolution Of Intel Processors
In this article, weve rounded up the first decades of history, from the 4004 in 1971 to the Pentium Pro in 1994.This period covers the first two eras of Moores Law (a concept weve discussed elsewhere), in which discrete capabilities were rapidly integrated on to a single contiguous wafer, and then as microprocessor transistor counts and clock speeds continued to rise.
![]() Intels 4004 was released in 1971 and represented a true milestone in computer history -- its the first commercial microprocessor completely integrated into a single chip. Designed by Federico Faggin, the 4004 ran at 740KHz, used a four-bit microarchitecture, and took eight compute cycles to execute a complete instruction. It was built for a Japanese company, Busicom, that had contracted Intel to build a line of chips suitable for use in future calculators. It was branded as the 4004 as part of a new naming scheme meant to identify the entire 4000-family as parts of an integrated whole (the 4000-4003 part numbers referred to other components within the design. After renegotiating their agreement with Busicom, Intel acquired the rights to market the design to other companies and began selling the MCS-4 micro computer set by late 1971. The Intel 8008 traded some clock speed -- it ran at 500KHz, as opposed to the 4004s 720KHz -- for enhanced capabilities. While somewhat slower, it could operate on eight bits of data at a time, rather than the four-bit limitation of the 4004. Initially commissioned before the 4004, the chip was late to market and the company that initially ordered it, Computer Terminal Corporation, later decided not to use the design. ![]() It was used in the French-built Micral-N minicomputer in 1972 and the Canadian MCM70 beginning in 1974. The chip used 3500 transistors, which made it significantly more complicated than the 4004 (back then, a few thousand transistors was a serious engineering effort.) Federico Faggin didnt lead the entire project, but he finalized the design and it was finished under his guidance. In 2008, Faggin called the 8008 the ancestor of the Pentium Pro. The Intel 8080 was a 1974 design that followed the 8008 and drastically increased its clock speed, from 500KHz to 2MHz (later chips at up to 3.125MHz would be released). The 8080 was the first chip Faggin designed from scratch, and it used the n-channel MOS process (the 4004 and 8008 had used p-channel MOS), with fewer support chips required and 6000 transistors in the base design. Intel, back then, was known more for its memory than its CPUs, but the 8080 was a huge success in the budding microcomputer market, with prominent design wins and broad industry uptake. The 8080 was the base CPU model used for the fledgling operating system, CPM. Intel would follow up the 8080 with the 8085 -- a binary-compatible CPU with support for 5V operation and several new instructions to support new interrupts. The 8086 and 8088 were conceived of as short-term solutions that would generate revenue for Intel while it worked on its real next-generation chip, the i432APX. The 8086 and 8088 are nearly identical, but the 8086 implemented a 16-bit internal and external buses, while the 8088 connected to the rest of the system via an 8-bit bus. Ironically, Intel built the 8086 and 8088 partly to fend off competition from Federico Faggin, who had left the company and started his own competing business, Zilog. The 86 in the CPU name came from the fact that it had 8 general-purpose 1 6 -bit registers. The final chip contained 20,000 transistors (29,000 if you counted the ROM and PLA), measured 33mm sq and was built on 3.2-micron technology. Its the grandfather of the modern x86 CPU industry.
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