INTEL'S FIRST MICROPROCESSOR

Intel 4004 microprocessor is generally considered the first and cost thousands of dollars. The first known competition for 4004 is the date of November 1971, she appeared in news. The project has generated 4004 Born in 1969, when Busicom, a Japanese calculator manufacturer, asked Intel to create a chipset for high-performance desktop calculators. Busicom original design contemplated a programmable chip that consists of 7 different cards, three of them used a special purpose CPU in their program stored in ROM and data stored in shift register read-write memory . Ted Hoff, Intel engineer assigned to evaluate the project, which is believed Busicom design can be simplified by using dynamic RAM for data storage, instead of logging memory change, and a more traditional general purpose CPU architecture. Hoff came up with a proposed architecture of four chips: a ROM chip for storing programs, a dynamic RAM chip data classification, a simple / O unit and a 4-bit central processing (CPU) , who considered that they could be integrated into a single chip, although it was not a designer of chips. This chip would later tell the chip 4004. Architecture and specifications of 4004 were the result of interaction with Stanley Mazor Intel Hoff, an engineer software reporting Hoff Busicom 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 center in the world using the integrated Sergeant - Fairchild 3708), has the background necessary to run the project after The sergeant was allowed to design a CPU on one 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 4,004 units were delivered for the first time in Busicom March 1971 and sent to other clients in late 1971.