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We're with The Government and you're under arrest. You and Robert Kahn are credited with "inventing" TCP/IP which is a key technology now used by internet villians. Unfortunately we can't arrest Chris Sholes, the developer of QWERTY, but we've already locked up Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff and the gang of Intel thugs who claim to have developed the first microprocessor. We're headed to Redmond after we're done with you.

This guy invented the microprocessor

Under dispute. Actually, he eventually lost his patent, but not until after he managed to extract millions in licensing fees from it. An anti-Hyatt page.

successfully sued the state of California for nearly $400 million because they tried to extort taxes he didn't owe out of him

Whether he owes them or not is still not settled. He won money from California on the basis of a Nevada jury for California's auditory process. The bottom line is that he moved to Las Vegas to avoid California taxes from his license windfall.

So far, everything he's done relating to tech has been righteous imo, let's cut him some slack.

From the article: "While some of Hyatt's patents predate or are contemporary with those granted to executives at Intel and Texas Instruments Inc., those companies made products that changed the world, Bassett said.

"I respect Gilbert Hyatt's work -- the process of engineering is difficult," Bassett said in a telephone interview. "But innovations are more than ideas. The broader context matters. If Gilbert Hyatt had never existed, I believe the microprocessor would have developed in the same way that it did.""

As Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microprocessor#Gilbert_Hyatt) says:

    Gilbert Hyatt was awarded a patent claiming an invention pre-dating both TI and Intel, describing a "microcontroller".[9] The patent was later invalidated, but not before substantial royalties were paid out.[10][11]

And from http://www.intel4004.com/hyatt...:

    "This patent was later invalidated in a patent interference case brought forth by Texas Instruments, on account that the device it described was never implemented and was not implementable with the technology available at the time of the invention. "

I know that 1990 (when that microprocessor patent was granted) is pre-Slashdot, but srsly, what's happening when patent trolls' whinging is front page news here?

Even more interesting is Faggin's own website where he explains some of the details of his relationship with Intel. This man literally changed Intel into a microprocessor company!! Without his development of the 4004 Intel would have probably died on the vine as a memory manufacturer. http://www.intel4004.com/

http://www.intel4004.com/ goes into much greater detail about Federico Faggin (primary co-developer and project leader), and the story of his accomplishments before and at Intel, his physical signature on all 4000 series chips, Intel's successful attempt to discredit him and patent his invention (the buried gate) that he invented at Fairchild before coming to Intel, and his departure to found Zilog with some members of his older design team.

Intel has been playing their game their way for a very long time.

It's a pity and a big mistake that such a great engineer did not get a Nobel prize yet. He revolutionized our world.

http://www.intel4004.com/ goes into much greater detail about Federico Faggin (primary co-developer and project leader), and the story of his accomplishments before and at Intel, his physical signature on all 4000 series chips, Intel's successful attempt to discredit him and patent his invention (the buried gate) that he invented at Fairchild before coming to Intel, and his departure to found Zilog with some members of his older design team.

Intel has been playing their game their way for a very long time.

Who would have guessed chips produced 35 years later, would still inherit the brain-damaged ISA of the 4004

Didn't ISA come out with the IBM using the 8086? The 4004 was more suited to things like a calculator.

I did look it up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry_Standard_Arc hitecture

IBM PC XT ISA = Industry Standard Architecture released in 1981.

The Intel 4004 processor was first fabricated in 1971 a decade before the ISA buss.

http://www.intel4004.com/

Please don't re-write history. Blame IBM for ISA, not Intel.

The fascinating story of the world's first microprocessor.

http://www.intel4004.com/

What you say might be correct, except that the primary chips that were considered CISC (8086-80286) did not, to the best of my knowledge, make use of microcode logic. (This was also true of the Z-80 and many other CISC chips.) As I understand it, the Intel line used Random Logic all the way through the 286 chip.

The key difference between a RISC and a CISC chip was always that a RISC chip executed a single instruction per cycle, whereas a CISC chip could take more than one cycle per instruction. To the best of my understanding, this paradigm was at the silicon level, NOT the microcode level. In fact, a "pure" RISC design wouldn't have microcode at all, as such code is the anti-thesis of "one instruction per cycle". Instead, it's up to the compiler to generate more complex sets of instructions to make up for the lack of microcode. This gives the compiler an opportunity to reorganize the instructions to ensure maximum utilization of the superscalar silicon. (Note: This may be as simple as expanding the instructions one way, or as complex as Out-Of-Order Execution.)

Today, pretty much all experts agree that the terms RISC and CISC are meaningless. Most processors use a pipelined design that executes one pipeline stage per clock cycle. This gives an effective execution speed of one cycle per instruction, but a rather large latency consistent with the pipeline length. Microcode may then be used to translate formerly CISC or RISC instructions to real processor instructions. In CISC instruction sets, this means that multiple real instructions may execute for each microcode instruction executed.

Let's not even get started on SIMD changes the playfield altogether.

No, actually. It is a 64bit extention to a 32bit extention to a 16bit extention to a 8bit extention to a 4 bit architecture. The Intel 4004 was actually the first one of this family. I guess you are too young to know.

How about when Federico Faggin first powered it up.

This site is also a very good read on the 4004 history and it's architect - Federico Faggin.

Let's not forget the 4004, which was designed for the Busicom calculator in the early 70s, but ended up being used in other applications, including the SIM-4 microcomputer.

Has Intel done anything this cool?

How about creating the first microprocessor? That cool enough for you?