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Intel Shipped 1 Billionth Computer Chip
murat submitted linkage to a simple little story that proclaims that Intel has recently shipped
it's One Billionth Chip. Quite an impressive accomplishment... it took them 25 years to reach the billions, but they estimate that they will hit 2 billion by only 2007.
any beer to go with that?
Je t'aime Stéphanie
blah blah blah 999999999th chip blah blah blah divide error blah blah blah
all futher jokes are now redundant
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
...Unfortunately their count was thrown off a bit during the early Pentium years... They've really only shipped 999,999,999.999239230823 processors
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
Intel is to be applauded for advancing the computer industry!
HenryJamesFeltus.com
...which chip was it? Centrino, P4 or Xeon?
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
Would you like fries with that?
Call them the McDonalds of the chip world.
Soon, their slogan will be "Billions and Billions of chips shipped" (then maybe McDonalds could sue Intel for trademark infringment! woo!)
My question is how many of those chips are stil actually being used today? huh? How many of those 8086 chips are in use today? (maybe NASA still uses a few, eh?)
And of course, my final question: Sure, 1 billion chips.. but how many transistors have you shipped on those 1 billion chips?
"But why have billions when we can have.....millions?"
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Maybe they should start putting any backlogged 486 processors in Happy Meals.
"Anonymous Coward" is for whistleblowers, not unpopular opinions.
AMD released it's AMD-1Billionth today, which the company states is actually rated as it's 17,275,000th processor.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Now if only they could sell a chip to everyone in China...they'd surpass that 2007 estimate handily!
I suppose congrats are in order for Intel. Wonder if AMD will ever reach one billion? The real question is....when are they releasing the 3.2Ghz and some price cuts to go along with it?
- Xenius
I wonder how many of them got buried?
Conversly, I wonder how many of the early ones (8088, et al) are still being used?
Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules.
McIntel
over 1 billon served.
I don't know if thats a comparison intel would like. Mcdonalds isnt exactly known for quality.
Some peddler^Wsalesman running Intel will no doubt formulate his own version of the sales curve. Seems like the peddlers always take over, even the fun stuff.
Infuriate left and right
Intel ships its 100th Itanium processor.
By 2007 it should reach the 200 milestone.
The article is talking about the billionth x86 chip, not just the billionth chip of any kind. If you included ALL the IC chips that Intel has made since being founded, the number would be closer to 10 billion I would predict.
Citing Intel's recent announcement that they have shipped over 1 billion CPUs, and the fact that they have not licensed a billion copies of DOS/Windows, Microsoft has launched a piracy investigation. "It's clear that there are CPU's out there running Windows illegally. The numbers simply do not match up." said Microsoft counsel Mike Rebadow. "We've of course accounted for IBM DOS and DR DOS sold in the 80's, as well as OS/2 which licensed Windows, but that still leaves hundreds of millions of CPUs unaccounted for. Piracy is the only way to explain this."
(You know the pose.)
"One billyun chips..."
The coolest voice ever.
>but they estimate that they will hit 2 billion by only 2007
They had already hit the 2 billion by now if AMD hadn't appeared in the scene as it has.
That's a slight bit of propaganda. That would make the average person (note average person not a /. reader) think that they have shipped 1 billion CPUs. That's graphic chips, CPU's, et al. It also is a combination of ALL the units they have bought out like Chips & Technologies (80,000 PowerBook Duos used their graphic chips before the Intel buyout) It also accounts for their USB controller chips etc etc. This is propaganda to show that Intel is in everything so you might as well buy Intel based stuff for " compatibility & to keep up with the Jones' " They know that no other chip producer could even come close to this total, so it's a marketing ploy to even let this information leak to any type of press. Nothing wrong with that, but it 's just as any other statistic, skewed to say whatever the hand in the sock puppet wants it to say.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
OK, the article actually says 1 billion computer chips. The early CPUs only had 29000 transistors; the new ones have about 50 million. Some of the support chips don't have so many transistors. But I think we can safely assume an average of 1 million transistors/chip over this time period. So we get an amazing one trillion (10^15) transistors! WOW!
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
The intel family of PC processors actually started with the 8080. It was released in April 1974 running at 2MHz, and is generally considered to be the first truly usable microprocessor design. It was used in many early computers, and formed the basis for machines running CP/M. The first single-board microcomputer was built on the basis of the 8080. The 8088 was actually released before the 8086, but as the article states the 8086 was developed first.
Something clever...
According to Moores law every quantity in the semiconductor industry doubles every 18 months, so they should reach 2 billion by the end of 2004. Are the laws of nature themselves being defied? What does this mean for the quest to find the universal field theory? Let's hope they've just done their sums wrong.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
However, that doesn't stop your "joke" from "sucking donkey cocks" and being "-1, Offtopic".
It sounds like this is actually the billionth *CPU* from Intel, not the billionth chip. Intel produces quite a lot of other silicon in addition to the CPUs it is best known for, and I suspect that Intel actually passed the billion *chip* mark many years ago.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
That's more than 1 per second since 1 billion seconds is almost 32 years.
I hear they're planning on releasing a new chip to celebrate this milestone. The chip will be based on the p4 architecture, and will be known as the p4 Type S. It will feature speed increasing kanji stickers, sporty wing, and a custom fan guaranteed to dull your hearing.
All these new features will come at a bit more of a cost but are guaranteed to increase your cpu's power by 50%.
AMD gave them a run during the 1GHz era but Intel is now ahead of the competition. I'm sure that the competition helped Intel reach this billion mark faster than it would have without competition. AMD with its once faster and cheaper chips helped lower the prices of Intel chips.
Competition is good for the consumer. Let's see what happens with Intel's prices now that there're on top.
--- I'm Green Hornet's sidekick not Inspector Clouseau's!
There have actually been 50 billion chips shipped. "Some of these chips, such as the 3.06ghz, are as much as 100 times faster than others, allowing pirates to encode music 100 times as fast. Thus, for our numbers, Intel has shipped over 50 billion chips" said RIAA president Hilary Rosen.
The subject says it all.
And next up from Apple: A computer with a CPU that's shipped only 2/3 of a billion, but feels like a billion.
I'm thinking they should go with ;)
"Over 1 billion Server'd"
Sooo..... how soon until they have little golden arches in front with a sign on it that says "Over 1 billion served"?
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
"Don't forget the prunes." L. Francis Herreshoff
That is one hell of a beowulf cluster!
Thanks to that Slot 1 of theirs, I can upgrade to any of the newer processors without changing out my motherboard. Thanks Intel!
How many chips would a chipmunk ship if a chipmunk could ship chips?
Money for nothing, pix for free
shipped it's One Billionth Chip.
In an unrelated story, Slashdot served up its one billionth page containing a CmdrTaco grammatical error...
McDonalds opened in the Midwest (Des Plaines, IL, acutally) in 1955.
Their 50 billionth hamburger was served in New York city in or around 1984.
That's ~30 years, or an average of 1 2/3 billion per year.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
ok, so does this mean it will take half as long to get to the 2 billionth computer chip?
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
No, microfries.
----- "Blame the guy who doesn't speak English." -- Homer J. Simpson
..wondered if it wasn't Intel's mistake to sell early Pentium specifications so that AMD may launch it's K5 series at the time....
On the other site, a little competition on the market never harms, does it????
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
Unless AMD64 takes off, that is...
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
To me this isn't the best news. When 2007 rolls around they will have junked A BILLION computers. Thanks Intel. Like Halliburton hasn't done enough for the environment... Planned obsolescence should be a crime.
You are about to give someone a piece of your mind, something which you can ill afford...
If I recall, in the 486, and possibly 386 days, didn't AMD manufacture over 20% of Intel's processors? I'm sure in the big picture it wasn't all that many, but how arbitrary is this 1 billion?
Two Rules For Success:
1) Never tell people everything you know.
Moore's Law, at it again.
it took them 25 years to reach the billions, but they estimate that they will hit 2 billion by only 2007
I wonder what the mean clock speed of those ::with pinky to chin:: 1 billion chips is?
# fuser -v
#
Shitton (n.): 1) An ambibously large number, larger than a crapton, but less than a holyfuckton.
Am I imagining it, or is it socially unacceptable to say good things about the "Powers That Be" in the IT industry in certain /. circles???
Now, I have bought many AMD powered PCs, use Linux alot for getting work done, but think Windows is excellent (MS may be dirty dealing, but that's beside my point), and you gotta be blind not to realize Intel has made a gazillion excellent chips, even if like myself, you chose cheaper alternatives.
It just seems like there are some creepy "Thought Police" types around here anytime something positive is said about corporations like Intel and MS..
PS, I buy AMD and VIA CPU's cause they are cheap and work, not cause Intel "sux"...
HenryJamesFeltus.com
How long will it take them to realize that x86 is outdated and we want something new and affordable?
a lot of silicon. Imagine how many implants could be made from them!
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
It isn't Intel that proclaimed they have reached their 1 billionth chip, it is Mercury Research that made the claim. Additionally, it isn't Intel that estimates they will reach 2 billion by 2007, it is again Mercury Research that makes the estimate. Until Intel comes out and says they have (which I think would be a milestone that they would proclaim quite loudly), I'm a little skeptical. Additionally, shipping one billion chips has nothing to do with Moore's law, only with good marketing :)
I'm sure they've sold far more then a billion 'chips' in their days. I wonder if they are only talking about 'desktop' CPUs or are including embedded versions of the x86.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Intel has a very interesting reading on their website about the history of the 8086 processor and how it was developed.
c le s/art_1.htm
http://www.intel.com/technology/itj/q12001/arti
Even if all those cpus were operational and in computers - that would only be one for every sixth person in the world.... that scares me.
Blah-blah half-the-world-has-yet-to-make-a-phone-call: I know poverty is something you can easily ignore, and that (asides from being offtopic, or is it?) it probably gets brought up in the wrong way by people with good intentions try to change your mind. I hope this will be a little different.
In addition to our computers, we have a telephony system upon which to network those computers. In addition to that we have the technical power to create new systems of operation on top of these raw systems for our enjoyment (pr0n, mp3s etc...) and for our communication (emails, IM/IRC)... It struck me just a moment ago that so many people volunteer their time to GNU stuff, community stuff. I thank you for this...but.
But perhaps we should also consider the social networks in which we are nodes, networks of trade, cultural networks, networks of humanity. Perhaps you should shut off your screen for a moment, and do something good for those networks not just this one.
meh, I dunno "Stuff that matters". Think about it.
Remember TI ships more chips each year than Frito Lay! Yeah they aren't as sexy or nearly as high margin as x86 cpu's but they are the little microcontrollers that make computers basically ubiquotous in our world.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I wonder what fraction of these one billion have already been obsoleted and are now sitting in landfills?
Given Moore's Law, I'll bet it's a high share.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Gotta be in the sextillions, right?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
possibly the funniest comment yet in this thread.
ed
God damn progress. Increased personal productivity and satisfaction, knowledge about the universe (SETI@home), improvements in medical knowledge (Folding@home), development of technologies for the desktop that we could have only dreamed about 20 years ago, etc. etc., etc. It makes me so angry!
Faster chips make the environment I live in much better.
Where are you living?
Justin
Some marketing team is trying to dream up a way to double shipments by making SMP mainstream in desktops. "Hmmm.....," says the Intel marketing drone, " If Apple can do it we can too. Somebody call Bill Gates and have him put even more bloat into MS-Word so it requires more processor power! Then we can run commercials about how every office *absolutely must have* dual 4-Ghz processors with 1GB RAM for word processing "
Don't forget: pissing off Microsoft. Follow the sig, until it changes.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Thus,
.536*141.6e9/173e6 dollars. That works out to $438.67 Current list prices for the Intel Pentium III, 3.06 GHz, range from $365-$759.99, with an average price listing of $459.53.
13139006 * e^(.17329 * x)
Where x is in years is the cumulative output of Intel.
This allows us to calculate with high accuracy the size of Intel's production line, a secret coveted by industry insiders. Differentiating, we have:
2276816 * e^(.17329 * x)
Thus, Intel currently has 173 million processors in various production stages.
This allows us to calculate another secret, coveted by all geeks - the true value of an Intel CPU.
Intel's current market capitalization is 141.6 billion US$. Based on their Q1 2003 quarterly report, 53.6% of their cost of production (including R&D and other expenses) goes into the Intel Architecture business unit.
If we know the size of the production line, the current valuation, and the percentage dedicated to CPU production, we can compute an average valuation for an Intel CPU.
Each current issue Intel CPU should be worth, on average
Conclusion - for every current release Intel CPU you buy, on average you are being ripped off by about $20.86, about 4.75% the value of the product. That is less than sales tax, and doesn't seem like the work of a greed hungry power monster.
Any similar statistics on Microsoft's product valuation would be highly interesting.
And just imagine all the pollution and garbage that's produced with those billion chips!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
It's a fluff peace, but it reminds one of how much has gone on in the last few decades and how much has changed.
.
.
Remember . .
When we wouldn't worry about more than 256 colors on a monitor?
When we only needed 640K of RAM?
When a 30-gig hard drive was big?
When a penguin was just something cute you saw at the park?
Now, lets see what changes during that next billion . .
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Motorola has shipped something like 5 Billion micro controllers.
But they are quoting the "ambiguous stats that the Mercury did. I find it VERY hard to beleive especially seeing since that would mean 1/5 of the worlds population has bought one x86 in some form or fashion. Take into account that 2/5 of the world's population doesn't even have electricity and another 1/5 could afford to even buy a raw 8086 chip off of eBay. Also take into account that AMD, Cyrix, and quite a few others also make x86 chips that have amounted to a sizeable portion of total x86 shipments. I can't think of how to check the accuracy of this report or statistic but it is very bogus, possibly through ambiguity on Intel's part. I could beleive they have produced 1 billion CPUs, GPUs, BCUs total. I doubt they have averaged to crank out chips at more than 1 per second over the life span of the x86 either. Do the math on a scientific calculator and see how BIG 1 billion really is! One can't even COUNT to 1 billion vocally in a lifetime!
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Just to clarify since a few of you were wondering and we're the source of the information: - It's 1 billion x86 CPUs (8086 thru P4, all flavors). No 8080x, i960s, Xscale, etc is counted. - Intel's figure is 1 billion. AMD is about 200 million units of x86 for the same time frame. Also, Intel never comes out and says what their own data shows, primarily due to reasons related to stock,the SEC and the competion. There were some hints that Intel probably reached 1 billion before external researchers thought they did, but nothing official.
AMD has shipped its 1,000,000,000+th CPU. An AMD spokesperson told us the number is not to be compared with Intel's shipments. Instead it based on the ratio of pin count of shipped CPUs. A CPU with twice as many pins as an AMD 80386 gets a shipment rating of 2+. With the recent launch of 4-way Opterons, AMD expects to reach 2,000,000,000+ mark next week, the spokesperson added.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
Intel has previously shipped over a billion of their 8051 8 bit microcontroller.
No electrons were harmed creating this post, though some may have been subjected to electrical and/or magnetic fields.
I think I can safely say that ARM has shipped approximately 0 processors. They have, however, licenced their technology to a whole range of semiconductor manufacturers, including Intel, who do all the mucking about with silicon and god-knows-what.
Ok, I'm being a little pedantic.. I'd be interested to know how many ARM processors had been produced by all these manufacturers - must be quite a few!
All in the name of progress! Where are we going to go when this place becomes so hot and toxic that only the people who made billions polluting it will afford the luxury of living here.
You are about to give someone a piece of your mind, something which you can ill afford...
They need to go to 64 bit processors to be able to count the number of CPUs that they have shipped.
Salt and Vinegar ?? Im sorry but it had to said... just to support us Brits...
The ARM company milestone list mentions "ARM announces that it has shipped over 1 billion of its microprocessor cores to date" at the start of 2002...
Oops, thtat word is trade-marked.
Followed some of your links. Yikes! I thought we were past this.
Sorry I dignified your post with a response.
Justin
The article is errant. It is GPUs CPUs BCUs (Bus Controller Units) - The article had its facts wrong, maybe on purpose. Intel might have released the information very ambiguously.
Try going to Google News and searching for 'mercury research billion intel' and see what you come up with. A whole lot of articles that say the same thing. Mostly because it's the 25th anniversary of the x86 family - they actually shipped a billion back in April.
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
Like McDonald's?
"...in 1978, back when a "hand-held" was a transistor radio, computers were immobile mainframes..."
The Apple II came out in 1977. If you can't call that a computer then this publication must be written at people who are pretty out of the loop. But it's a Silicon Valley publication; apparently they need new writers.
If they were talking about 1976 (Apple I) or 1975 (Altair) it might be excusable. Heck some people say we had PCs back in 1950. But 1978? The revolution was on.
Take your hood off if you want to talk, AC.
-- http://frobnosticate.com
See here
Notice the LED says 133. The owner did this cause he was bored, and said it actually only runs at 100. The rest of the site is also quite hilarious....
Quite an impressive accomplishment... it took them 25 years to reach the billions, but they estimate that they will hit 2 billion by only 2007
I guess every 25 years, the consumption of microprocessors quintuples.
-no broken link
It is very awkward being born in the year that the first x86 was released. I wish my processing speed had increased as much as the CPUs.
1 Billion?!? 640k should be enough for everyone.
PlatinumCursor - "Blinded by the bling..."
On gamer's machines it should read:
"Over 1 billion severed"
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Oh yes we did!
(He's behind you!)
graspee
I read somewhere that humans have manufactured more transistors than anything else. Makes sense, especially when you think of how many went into just these billion intel x86s.
Sigs are so 80's.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Have they really shipped a billion, or just an american billion?
American billion = one thousand million 1,000,000,000
Rest of the world billion = one million million
1,000,000,000,000
(ie you don't go to a billion until you have completely exhausted the entire million - just like all other lower figures used in counting)
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
How many transisitors is that?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They can say billions and billions "served"
Statistically speaking, there's a 99.998% chance that my IQ is higher than yours. Get over it.
has shipped over six billion ICs. But who's counting?
Stand back. I've got a brain and I'm not afraid to use it.
Did you want to upsize that suck?
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
Call them the McDonalds of the chip world.
[...]
My question is how many of those chips are stil actually being used today?
All right... How many of those McDonalds hamburgers are still in use today?
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}