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Origins of the Modern PC
Homncruse writes "ComputerWorld dispels myths about the history of modern day computers — or, more appropriately, the invention of the first microprocessor. Contrary to popular belief, 'the [Intel] 8008 was not actually derived from the 4004 — they were separate projects.' In fact, the 8008 concept didn't originate from Intel (though they were eventually granted IP rights.) The article goes on to explain the events leading up to the invention and first intended use of the 8008 (a predecessor to the 8086, etc.), and how Intel was initially uneasy about the venture."
Processor that is!
The resulting compact enclosure had heat problems
... I can't believe they were having problems overclocking back then TOO. You'd think in 40 years, someone would have come up with a better solution that using water..
Coincidence? I think not! There's some sort of curse going on with that computer and I predict that, sooner or later, everyone associated with that project will die!
I know it's hard to believe, but I am clairvoyant.
I enjoyed the Blueprint of the Datapoint 2200 enclosure, showing the crowded interior. I guess the caption writer has never seen the inside of a mechanical calculator. Imagine an object the size of a small desktop PC enclosure, entirely stuffed with mechanical linkages. It's truly astonishing.
By comparison, a handful of circuit boards stuffed with SSI and MSI chips was delightfully simple. No moving parts! No lubrication! No wear!
Fossil fuel engines, refridgeration and air conditioning systems have been around a lot longer than that, and there's still no better way to cool off something hot than running a cool liquid around it.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
I refuse to read the article because it goes against my creationist beliefs.
How dare you suggest that the x86 evolved from the 8008. Me and my other enlightened brothers believe that the x86 was created by the supreme BG (MBWH*) who resides in MS, a utopia where all processors will eventually return to.
*Megahertz Be With Him
Summation 2
Tracing the x86 back to the 8008 is a mighty tenuous connection.
There are two very weak links.
First, the 8008 to 8080 transition was a major re-do. Like ten times the speed, an external stack, more. The opcodes were upwardly compatible to a point, but that's about the only similarity.
Next, the 8080 to 808x transition was just as abrupt. 16 bit registers, segments, and more. Again there was a certain backward compatibility, if you converted all the mnemonics and register names, but that was about all.
you can only sell one chip per computer, while with memory, you can sell hundreds of chips per computer
Probably meant sense back then too - before Japan came on to the scene.
Wang (now a defunct company) built a PC in the early 70's that was actually called a "PC" but it stood for Professional Computer. It used the 8088 technology. Earlier prototypes utilized the 4004 and the 8008 as well and was in other technology designed by the company R&D department. Later the computer used the 8086 but for years was not "IBM" compatible at the microcode level thus could not run IBM type programs. The company was inflexible on fixing the problem as they expected IBM to conform to Wang Standards rather than vice versa. Some of the instruction set worked differently in order to save a clock cycle or two.
Eventually the Wang PC became IBM compatible but it was too little... too late and the use of the PC was pretty much restricted to being a terminal rather than a full fledged processing device.
Dr. An Wang was the person who designed core memory and started Wang Laboratories in the 50's. What an inspiration he was (and still is although he died in 1990) to young and old who are inspiring individuals with creative talents.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
What are you doing with your Wang?
...that I was thinking of:
Animated GIF slide show of internals
Banging his Wang in a She-Bang.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, before general-purpose personal computers, there was a whole industry for "word processors". These were special-purpose machines which offered text editing, printing, and storage for documents. They replaced typewriters. For the first time, people could edit documents without retyping. Word processors were not intended to be user-programmable; they ran a built-in application. Wang was a big name in that area, as were Datapoint and IBM. The original IBM PC reused the display from the IBM Displaywriter, IBM's family of word processors.
The next step was "shared-logic word processors", where several terminals connected to a central unit, with the central unit having a disk and printer. This was a low-end version of time-sharing. Datapoint introduced ArcNet, so the word processors could send documents to each other. But none of this stuff was user-programmable, although the hardware underneath was a general purpose CPU. It wasn't considered reasonable that users in a typical office could program something as complex as a computer. Also, these machines barely had an operating system; they were usually running the application on the bare machine.
After the IBM PC came out, Wang tried to enter that business. They weren't very successful. I used one of their early 8086 machines, the Wang PIC, which had a scanner. It ran a variant of DOS, which, interestingly, allowed about 800K of user space instead of 640K, because they did the split between RAM and device space at a higher address than IBM did. (The real 8086 limit isn't 640K; it's 1024K minus whatever address space is needed for devices.) It used a completely different (and more rugged) plug-in card design than the IBM PC, and wasn't software-compatible. A nice machine, it just lost out for being incompatible.
So really, PCs are descended from these word processors.
1. Invent CPU
2. Give away IP rights
3. ?????????
4. Watch Intel Profit!
Hindsight truly is 20/20.
I had a Wang 286 once. Actually, I think it was the first intel box I ever owned. That was WAY after it should have been trashed though - all of my friends had 486's and I had my beloved Amiga. The Wang was just a toy I acquired somewhere for the fun of it.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Just goes to prove that a dorky name can doom even the most brilliant genius.
In terms of the first microprocessor you should check out Pico Electronics Ltd, they work working with Sinclair and Monroe and had produced a single chip processor for calculators that was for sale in early 1971.
http://www.xnumber.com/xnumber/microprocessor_history.htm
The also created the X10 signaling over powerline for home automation and morphed into the eponymous company that had its short burst of infamy with its pop up advertising, before later declaring bankruptcy!
It was Intel's clear intention to allow simple, fully automatic translation of assembly code between one generation and the next. So the fact that the transition from each generation to the next is expressed in large steps does not make it a mighty tenuous connection. To exemplify:
(1) The slow speed of the 8008 required hardware acceleration for parity computation, so the 8008 ALU provided a parity bit in the flags register. That bit lasted all the way through the Pentium line. (Could it remain in X86_64? I no longer work in the assembly language world and do not know.)
(2) The original A,B,C,D,E,H/L register configuration with its byte/word weirdness in the 8008 was still plainly visible in the 16-bit X86 line, and hints of those structures lasted right through IA32, though IA32 does have significant improvements in orthogonality. (This is the genesis of the non-orthogonal register sets that compiler writers complained about all the way through IA32, which are fully rectified only with X86_64.)
The connection is not only not tenuous, but (I claim, having worked with every CPU they built from the 8008 to my current Core2duo) clearly connected by an intentional, nearly unblemished record of source-level backward compatibility for the 40 years of its history.
You do have a good point with respect to the way Intel scheduled its generational developments. When my group at AT&T was debating a project based on i486 DX2/66 and i960CA/CF, the Intel FAEs were exceptionally forthcoming with us about the way Intel developed their processor families. One of the more interesting things I learned was that Intel's X86 families were developed using dual teams, each team leapfrogging the other with successive generations. There was constant discussion among the teams, so often ideas from one would slip into the other.
There is no question that each generation was intended to be as large a leap as possible beyond the last, so you do have a good point about the internal architecture of the processor families.
1. Hire enginners
2. Do the opposite of what they recommend
3. ????
4. Errr... Where is the profit?
Ye flippin' gods.
Let me summarize a few salient points of TFA here:
It's very nice that the name of Roche was documented in this article for posterity. But what we really want is to have the name of these managers documented and written down in business textbook, along with their pictures, the history of their glorious achievements, and maybe a warning such as "Do not hire, consult, play golf with, or even breathe the same air as those morons".
I'd call this a case of terminal stupidity, but this pun is way too refined for the monstrous cluster-f*ck that these PHBs achieved.
Fantasy: http://ferrisfantasy.blogspot.com/
4004: Lineage not found.
If you specify it in computations performed per Watt of electricity consumed, Moore's law essentially ened or at least slowed considerably several years ago. The DEC Alpha made a big impression because the motherboard shipped with a heat sink on the CPU (the original "hot" CPU!). Used to be that a 230 Watt power supply was considered "server class". Now you can buy desktops with kilowatt power supplies.
Statesman
or at least one of the first few, was also a PC - a Programmable Controller used for controlling industrial equipment or processes. Eagle Signal's Industrial Controls Division's CP700 Eptak modular system was 8080 based, and some of the early software was developed on Datapoint terminals. They paid $365 each for the first 8080s - an 8080A now goes for $1 or less. Eagle also ran what might have been the first college-level microprocessor course in-house for employees. It was taught by a prof from Iowa State and covered the 8080, 6800 and 6502. The original 8080s also required an external clock as the two pins across which you were supposed to be able to attach a crystal wouldn't osciallate. Don't recall the clock speed - 1MHz initially I think - but the 4MHz Z80 was considered a major speed advance.
Eagle Signal also had a Traffic Control Division (you can still see their traffic light control cabinets on street corners) that was one of the first 8008 users, and also used Data General Novas for traffic controls.
Neither Eagle Signal division exists any longer. Both were owned by Gulf+Western Industries in the early 70s and located in Davenport, IA. Both divisions eventually moved to Austin, TX. Danaher now owns the industrial controls product line, and probably makes more profit selling Eagle's HP5 electro-mechanical timers than its electronic products, which was where the company's profits always came from.
Remember now, Wang Cares.
And from the Intel 8008, the 8008135 was created. It was optimized for Internet use.
So rather than the x80/x86 being the only Intel CPU to have mass-market success, it's in fact a third-party design that Intel started with, and they're batting 0.000?
They've done better in the embedded market, with chips like the 8048/8051 and the i960 family.
Actually, the company exits but has since gone through numerous mergers and name changes. It also made him and quite a few shareholders rather rich when Getronics (a Dutch firm) bougth them out. I was working for them at the time. Quite a bit of the old company remains in the US Operation. Still, as an independant entity yes, Wang is defunct.
Thank goodness he's drawn attention away from my shirt!
The Wang was just a toy I acquired somewhere for the fun of it.
How old were you?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
How much of modern PC architecture goes back to the 8008?
It's interesting how bean-counter thinking almost kept Intel from being the biggest chip company:
Article quote: Frassanito recalled accompanying Roche to a meeting with Bob Noyce, head of Intel, in early 1970 to try to get Intel -- then a start-up devoted to making memory chips -- to produce the CPU chip. Roche presented the proposed chip as a potentially revolutionary development and suggested that Intel develop the chip at its own expense and then sell it to all comers, including CTC, Frassanito recalled.
"Noyce [of Intel] said it was an intriguing idea, and that Intel could do it, but it would be a dumb move," said Frassanito. "He said that if you have a computer chip, you can only sell one chip per computer, while with memory [Intel's current focus], you can sell hundreds of chips per computer.
Table-ized A.I.
Of being cheap and non-toxic. For whatever other benefits another fluid might have, it just isn't as abundant as water. If a device is water cooled, it is easy for the end user to obtain more coolant when needed. It is also safe for that use to handle the coolant, as it is just water. Thus even if you can make a synthetic with superior energy transfer characteristics to water, it isn't likely to be used in most cases. The benefit of a coolant that, literally, comes from every tap and is literally safe enough to drink is rather large.
The DEC Alpha made a big impression because the motherboard shipped with a heat sink on the CPU (the original "hot" CPU!).
AT-clones (286) had heatsinks in the late 80ies - even those with supposedly "low power" Harris 80C286 (Cmos) CPUs.
However, these were small flat parts glued directly on top of the chip. Dissipation would have probably been somewhere in the 3W range.
The 8086 set the PC technology back 15 years, at least. At 1985, the Amiga could do hi-res multicolor bitmap displays, preemptive multitasking, hardware-accelerated graphics and sound, DMA, auto-configurable peripherals (through Zorro slots), 32-bit programming (although the addressing was 24 bit) without the curse of far pointers, and many other goodies that came much later in the PC world.
The PC technology was largely retarded: stupid BIOS, stupid VGA register layout, stupid memory addressing, stupid interrupt controller, stupid DMA...all these things were very hard to program. But it dominated the world, because of compatibility...
Sure we wang!
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.