Intel's first microprocessor
Intel 4004 microprocessor is generally regarded as the first and cost thousands of dollars. The first contest known for 4004 is the date of November 1971, she appeared on the news. The project has generated 4004 Born in 1969, when Busicom, a Japanese calculator manufacturer, asked Intel to create a set of calculator chips for high-performance desktop. Busicom original design includes a programmable chip that consists of 7 different cards, three of them of a special purpose CPU in its program stored in ROM and data stored in shift register read / write memory. Ted Hoff, Intel engineer assigned to evaluate the project, believed Busicom design can be simplified by using dynamic RAM for storing data, instead of logging memory change, and a more traditional CPU architecture general purpose. Hoff came up with a proposed architecture of four chips: one chip ROM for program storage, a classification of dynamic RAM chip data, a simple drive E / S and a central processing 4-bit (CPU), who considered that they could be integrated into a single chip, although not a designer of chips. This chip later said the 4004 chip. Architecture and specifications of 4004 were the result of interaction with Stanley Mazor Intel Hoff, a software engineer reporting Busicom Hoff Engineering and Masatoshi Shima. In April 1970, Intel hired Federico Faggin led the design of seven four chips. Faggin, who originally developed the silicon gate technology (sergeant) at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1968 [10] (and also designed the first shopping mall in the world using integrated Sergeant - Fairchild 3708), has the background necessary to implement the project after the sergeant was allowed to design a CPU on a chip with the correct speed, power dissipation and cost. Faggin also developed a new methodology for the design of random logic gate based on silicon, making possible 4004. The production of 4004 units were delivered for the first time in March 1971 and sent to other customers Busicom late 1971.