Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Intel sold only $3000 worth of chips, but business has picked up since then (Intel is
now the world's largest CPU chip manufacturer).
In the late 1960s, calculators were large electromechanical machines the size
of a modern laser printer and weighing 20 kg. In Sept. 1969, a Japanese company,
Busicom, approached Intel with a request that it manufacture 12 custom chips for a
proposed electronic calculator. The Intel engineer assigned to this project, Ted
Hoff, looked at the plan and realized that he could put a 4-bit general-purpose CPU
on a single chip that would do the same thing and be simpler and cheaper as well.
Thus, in 1970, the first single-chip CPU, the 2300-transistor 4004, was born (Fag-
gin et al., 1996).
It is worth noting that neither Intel nor Busicom had any idea what they had
just done. When Intel decided that it might be worth a try to use the 4004 in other
projects, it offered to buy back all the rights to the new chip from Busicom by re-
turning the $60,000 Busicom had paid Intel to develop it. Intel's offer was quickly
accepted, at which point it began working on an 8-bit version of the chip, the 8008,
introduced in 1972. The Intel family, starting with the 4004 and 8008, is shown in
Fig. 1-11, giving the introduction date, clock rate, transistor count, and memory.
Chip
Date
MHz
Trans. Memory
Notes
4004
4/1971
0.108
2300
640 First microprocessor on a chip
8008
4/1972
0.108
3500
16 KB First 8-bit microprocessor
8080
4/1974
2
6000
64 KB First general-purpose CPU on a chip
8086
6/1978
5-10
29,000
1 MB First 16-bit CPU on a chip
8088
6/1979
5-8
29,000
1 MB Used in IBM PC
80286
2/1982
8-12 134,000
16 MB Memory protection present
80386
10/1985
16-33 275,000
4 GB First 32-bit CPU
80486
4/1989
25-100
1.2M
4 GB Built-in 8-KB cache memory
Pentium
3/1993
60-233
3.1M
4 GB Two pipelines; later models had MMX
Pentium Pro 3/1995
150-200
5.5M
4 GB Two levels of cache built in
Pentium II
5/1997
233-450
7.5M
4 GB Pentium Pro plus MMX instructions
Pentium III
2/1999
650-1400
9.5M
4 GB SSE Instructions for 3D graphics
Pentium 4
11/2000 1300-3800
42M
4 GB Hyperthreading; more SSE instructions
Core Duo
1/2006 1600-3200
152M
2 GB Dual cores on a single die
Core
7/2006 1200-3200
410M
64 GB 64-bit quad core architecture
Core i7
1/2011 1100-3300
1160M
24 GB Integrated graphics processor
Figure 1-11.
Key members of the Intel CPU family. Clock speeds are measured
in MHz (megahertz), where 1 MHz is 1 million cycles/sec.
Intel did not expect much demand for the 8008, so it set up a low-volume prod-
uction line. Much to everyone's amazement, there was an enormous amount of in-
terest, so Intel set about designing a new CPU chip that got around the 8008's limit
