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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.
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