Intel's 4004 Microprocessor Turns 40

harrymcc writes "On November 15th 1971, Intel introduced the 4004 — the first single-chip microprocessor. Its offspring, needless to say, went on to change the world. But first, Intel tried using the 4004 in a bunch of products that were interesting but often unsuccessful — like a pinball machine, an electronic vote-counting machine, and Wang's first word processor. Technologizer's Benj Edwards is celebrating the anniversary with an illustrated look back at this landmark chip." Here's another nostalgic look back at V3.co.uk, and one at The Inquirer. And an anonymous reader points out another at ExtremeTech, from which comes this snippet: "Designed by the fantastically-forenamed Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff, and Stanley Mazor, the 4004 was a 4-bit, 16-pin microprocessor that operated at a mighty 740KHz — and at roughly eight clock cycles per instruction cycle (fetch, decode, execute), that means the chip was capable of executing up to 92,600 instructions per second. We can’t find the original list price, but one source indicates that it cost around $5 to manufacture, or $26 in today’s money."

Comments

Technological progress vs monetary policy

[roman_mir]

"On November 15th 1971, Intel introduced the 4004 ......

We canâ(TM)t find the original list price, but one source indicates that it cost around $5 to manufacture, or $26 in todayâ(TM)s money."

So the value of dollar went down by over factor of 5 since 1971.

Of-course today it wouldn't cost $26 to manufacture 4004, because the technology is so much more advanced, it would cost much less than that, but if it's true, that the cost would be $26 to manufacture one today, then the value of dollar went down even more.

Apple I cost $666.66 USD in 1976 and it was $475 in 1977. - So that's the improvement in efficiency and economy of scale allowing the drop the prices in one year by over 29%.

If the same rate of price reduction could be applied to 4004, then without inflation in today's money 4004 would have cost literally 0. With inflation it's less than 0, but that makes no sense (here is a 4004 and and over 132K USD, just take it off my hands!)

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Our progress is being destroyed by our monetary policy.