A Brief History
On November 15, 1971, a History changing event took place when Intel Corporation released their 4004 microchip processor for sale, allowing the manufacture of small computers. (Happy 45th Birthday, Intel 4004!) A Santa Clara, California (“Silicon Valley”) company, Intel is the world’s largest manufacturer and seller of semi-conductor chips for use in computers.
Digging Deeper
Back in 1971 great strides were being made in the development of electronic processors and the miniaturization of them, allowing the first hand held calculators and increasingly smaller computers, including a mini-computer in the (then) high technology F-14 Tomcat fighter plane. Other companies were making progress in this area as well, but Intel was the first to release a fully integrated monolithic CPU in such a small chip. (Size was about as big as your little finger nail, as described by Intel themselves on their website, http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/history/museum-story-of-intel-4004.html.) A 16 pin Dual In-line Package (DIP), the 4004 could be easily installed into a circuit board by merely pressing it into place. Pathetic by today’s standards, perhaps it would help to point out that this tiny device had the computing power of the first gigantic room sized computers in the mid-1940’s.
Utilizing silicon gate technology, it was carved from a single piece of silicon, allowing for 2300 separate transistors (an incredible amount at that time, but minuscule compared to today’s chips boasting over half a billion transistors). The Intel 4004 could perform over 92,000 tasks per second and was 4 bit processor with 640 bytes of RAM and 4KB of ROM. Cost to produce a 4004 was about $5 each, while collectors could buy one online for $49 in 2010 on eBay! (Note: Are there really collectors of this sort of thing? Just asking…) During its production life (ended in 1982) the 4004 was made by other manufacturers as well as Intel.
Today we would think of the Intel 4004 as a relic of a distant and primitive past, but the silicon layering technology it pioneered led to the explosion in small computers that makes so many things possible today. Today at Walmart.com you can buy a refurbished HP laptop with an Intel processor that boasts 2GB of memory (RAM) and a 32GB hard drive for only $139. Now that is progress! (For only $70 more you could get one with 4GB of memory and a 500GB hard drive!) For someone like me that went to college when computers used IBM punch cards or HP perforated tape, the $339 brand new HP laptop with an Intel processor with 8GB of RAM and 1 TB (that is “terabyte, a trillion with a “T” bytes) of hard drive memory is a fantasy device of incredible proportions.
Question for students (and subscribers): What is being developed today that in 45 years will seem prehistoric? Give us your predictions to share with our other readers in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Myslewski, Rik. Happy 40th Birthday Intel 4004. The Register, 2011.
