1. The Story of the Intel® 4004

1. Intel got its start in 1968 when a company named Nippo Calculating Machine Corporation hired Intel to design custom chips for the Busicom 141-PF Printing Calculator. Intel designed a set of chips known as the MCS-4. It included a CPU chip 4004, a ROM chip, a RAM chip, and a shift register chip for input output ports. In 1968 Intel starts, but wasn’t till 1971 introduces its first microprocessor which was 4004. The 4004 held 2,300 transistors. Then 1972 Intel came out with the first 8-bit microprocessors, and then in 1973 the PL/M language was introduced for microprocessors. 1974 the 8080 microprocessor comes, it has almost double the transistors at 4,500. In 1975 the ICE-80 is put out in the market, along with the Itellec model 800 which is a disk based system. The 8085 is introduced in 1976 it has 5 volt power supply; the world sees the first microcontrollers the 8748/8048 with embedded intelligence. In 1977 the 2910 decoder becomes the telecommunications standard. The 16-bit 8086 microprocessor becomes industry standard in 1978 for all PC’s. 1980 the world witnesses the birth of internet with Ethernet networking. IBM selects the 8088 to power the IBM PC in 1981. The 8098 is the first 16-bit microcontroller released in 1982 along with the 16-bit 80286 (Intel 286) microprocessor which had 134,000 transistors held in it. In 1983 the 80C49/80C51 CHMOS DRAM comes out with densities high as 256K. In 1985 Intel exits the DRAM business to on making processors. They enter into making supercomputers, introducing iPC/1 with the Intel -286 processors working together to solve more complex problems. That same year Intel introduces the Intel 386 32-bit microprocessor with 275,000 transistors. 1987 the iPSC/2 supercomputers with Intel 386 processors and the Intel 80387 math processors hit the market. IN 1988 Intel enters the flash memory business with EPROM tunnel oxide technology. 1989 the Intel /i860 processor with 1 million transistors is introduced. IN 1990 Netport print servers are made to make it easier to hook up printers for networking. The Touchstone Delta makes its appearance in 1991 with the i860 processors and capable of 32 billion floating-point operations per second. 1992 Is the introduction of the Intel-82420 chip set for the 486 processor systems. 1993 the Pentium processor with 3.1 million transistors is released into market. It has speeds of 66 to 60 MHz integrated floating point unit and a 2 on chip 8K caches. 1994 LANDesk network manager software products hit the market. In 1995 the Pentium Pro processor for 32-bit work stations along with the Intel 82430FX PCi set, Pentium processor based PC’s. 1996 Intel builds a supercomputer the runs at one trillion floating point per second, the first (teraflop). In 1997 the Strata flash is created, increases flash memory devices allowing storage of multiple bits of data in a single cell. We also see the Pentium MMX and the Pentium II with 7.5 million transistors. In 1998 Intel markets the Strong ARM a high performance low power processors for the value PC market, and the Pentium II Xeon for mid-range and high end work stations and server markets. 1999 Intel markets Pentium III and the Pentium III Xeon processors. In 2000 the Pentium 4 processor with 42 million transistors and a processor speed of 1.5 gigahertz. In 2001 Itanium processor and the Xeon processors come to market that support high performance work stations and servers. 2008 sees the first Quad Core processors 2010 is when a processor with 2 billion transistors is first introduced. Which was the Itanium processor?

I. The growth of integrated circuits is something that is quite surprising, if there’s one thing that I learned is that Moore’s law is certainly true, if not just a little off. We can see that processor growth is reasonable at first, and then it makes a leap and goes back to a reasonable rate again. What found is when that processors and other technology makes a leap is those in tech field have made some break through or other. I personally don’t understand why I would need so much from my computer. But as I go through this course I hope that I’ll gain understanding of what I don’t understand or don’t know. I wonder if any ever thought that we might be making processors to powerful too fast. And that someday it’s going to just burn out like an old light bulb, I don’t know. Just because I read it doesn’t mean I understand it, not all of it anyway. To me the growth of processors and integrated circuits is growing at staggering rate. It seems to me that it out of control, every year they make something that’s twice as powerful as the last. Do these companies expect for people treat their computers and notebooks as disposable and just get a new one every year, I wouldn’t be able to keep up even if I wanted to. I’ve always found computers to be frustrating, but again with this course I hope that will change to. So I conclude that its current rate, that we’ll see processors with 100 billion transistors before 2020. I don’t think I’ll see processor with one trillion transistors in my life time, not unless there’s another break through soon.