The first commercial microprocessor, celebrates its fortieth anniversary. Chip maker Intel, was published on 15 november 1971, the Intel 4004, a 4-bit cpu with 2300 transistors, a clock speed of 740kHz, and a 16-pin connector.
The design of the Intel 4004 processor is for a large part based on the work of Marcian Hoff – employee number 12 and Federico Faggi. The chipontwerpers applied the so-called Silicon Gate technology to the 4004. This technique, which makes it possible to place several transistors with a higher clock speed to use, would by Intel later also be applied to the 8008 and 8080 processors.
The 4004 was the first semiconductor to which all components of a central processor unit, such as the rom module and a ram unit, in a single chip package. In total, over 2,300 transistors in the 4004 included, at that time a record. The clock speed of Intel’s first cpu was 740kHz, where a voltage was required of 15V.
The 4004 processor was only 4-bit-calculations, allowing for 8bit calculations, a total of eight klokcycli were needed. The number of instructions that the cpu per second could handle was limited 92600, while Intel 4004 had an instruction set of 46 instructions.
The 4004, with a 10-micron technique was created, was ultimately in 1971 really. In the years before was there by Hoff and Faggi all of the design work. At the end of december 1970, received Hoff the first wafers for the 4004, but this did not work. A few months later would Faggi night at four o’clock his wife woke up to call to tell you that it was successful. In the first batch of 4004’s that worked, were the initials FF in the bottom right corner scratched.
Incidentally, it is still the question of whether the 4004 would ever have been developed if Hoff had not been approached by Busicom, a Japanese manufacturer of calculators in the market for a new chip. Intel thought for that order in the first instance to a design that consists of twelve building blocks existed, but Hoff knew the whole to bring back up to four components, which on one chip were placed.
Although the 4004-processorontwerp for the first time was used in the Busicom 141-PF calculator, it would be another three years and four chipgeneraties take one of Intel’s processors on a commercially available pc would be used. In the course of the years were less complex variants of the 4004 processor, released under other type numbers 4001, 4002 and 4003 were taped. The Intel 4004 processor family was by the chip manufacturer until 1981 commercially offered.
