Lesson 5 of 81965–19746 min
The microprocessor and Moore's law
In 1969 the Nippon Calculating Machine Corporation asked a young company called Intel to design twelve custom chips for its Busicom 141-PF printing calculator. Intel's engineers proposed something else: four chips, one of them a general-purpose processor that software would tell what to do.
On 15 November 1971 Intel advertised the result in Electronic News under the headline “Announcing a new era in integrated electronics”. The chip was the 4004.
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Sources
- Intel's First Microprocessor — Intel
- 1971: Microprocessor Integrates CPU Function onto a Single Chip — Computer History Museum
- 1965: “Moore's Law” Predicts the Future of Integrated Circuits — Computer History Museum