40 years ago today ,electronics and semiconductor trade newspaper Electronic news ran an advertisement for a new kind of chip.The Intel 4004 waz a $60 chip in a 16 pin Dual in line package was an entired CPU packed onto a single integrated circuit(IC)
At a bare min, a CPU is an instruction decorder and an Arithmetic Logical Unit(ALU);the decorder reads the memory and directs the ALU to perform appropriate arithmetic.The 4004 integrated the different Cpu components into one 2300-transistor chip.
4004 wasnt just a new direction for the computer industry;it was also a new direction for Intel .Since its founding in 1968 ,Intel was only a memory company,making various kinds of RAM ,boasting some of the fastest and highest density memory in the industry,.It wasnt really in the business of making CPU's or logic chips.Nonetheless ,Japenese electronic computer company Busicom approached Intel in 1969,asking the memory company to build a new set of logic chips for its calculators.That Intel paid Busicom for the rights to the design, allowing the firm to sell and marketing the chip family.Branded as MCS-4,the chips started production in june 1971,being before advertised to the commercial markets 40 years ago today.
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