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The Intel 4004 Microprocessor Turns 44
mcpublic writes: Today is the 44th anniversary of the Intel 4004, the pioneering 4-bit microprocessor that powered the first electronic taxi meters. According to the unaffiliated (and newly renamed) Intel 4004 45th Anniversary Project web site, they have just re-created the complete set of VLSI mask artwork for the 4004 using scalable vector graphics, and updated their Busicom 141-PF calculator replica aimed at collectors and hobbyists. Included is some interesting historical perspective: Back in the early 1970s, there was no electrical CAD software, design-rule checkers were people, and VLSI lithographic masks were hand-crafted on giant light tables by unsung "rubylith cutters."
a beowulf cluster of 4004s!
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Weird, tell it to IBM that was routing ICs and backplanes in the 1960s by computer.
Intrigued by the notiion they had drawn up the mask as an SVG I was looking to see if it was available directly off their page, but after a fruitless 30 (perhaps even 40) seconds of looking I gave up in dispair as my attention span er... ...somethinged or other. After all I our browsers can handle it and it would look pretty cool. Or is it in the download packages?
According to the Wikipedia the 4004 ... "... was the first commercially available microprocessor by Intel". Please pay attention to nice exclusionary language... "commercially" and by "Intel".
I remember the time when IT world was switching from 16 bit CPU to 32 bit CPUs. Seemed like a huge leap forward, however a veteran colleague cooled me down by asking a couple of questions. He asked me if I knew that cruise missiles use 128 bit CPU. Not because more bits were meant better marketing. 128 bits CPU allowed more productive computing at the low clock rates at that time.
I expected a MojoKid hothardware article linking to some fuckass site where I could buy one.
FIM P0
I was one of those kids who built up simple bread board computers using stock standard TTL parts. I learned more about digital machinery in reading about and figuring out how processors work by trying to create my own bits of programmable/sequence-able logic using the astonishingly complete range of commodity TTL parts that where cheaply available in the late 1970s and 1980s.
The 4004 was an important inspiration, but TTL is what launched our pervasive digital age.
Unlike the 4004, it blows my mind how much of the original TTL part library is STILL available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Nothing evolves faster than the word of god in the minds of men who think themselves divinely inspired.
Like the CADC?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It was the first microprocessor you could buy from someone and program yourself.
Prior to the 4004, you made your own chip, with your own instruction set and your own assembler, with your own chip fab.
If by "program yourself" you mean have Intel make mask ROMs for you, or make your own with your own chip fab...
1971 wasn't exactly known for its USB devkits.
Those mask cutters look like Bond girls
My father spent months at his home-made light table back around 1965 cutting traces in rubylith film in order to create the offset masks for orienteering maps.
He needed one such mask for each color in the finished map, any mistakes had to be fixed with small amounts of red lacquer which then had to dry completely before it could be recut.
The big advantage for VLSI vs a map was that most lines were straight so you didn't need to trace curved lines like you do for the contours on a map.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
Is that 128 bit a VLIW like computer? Used mainly for parallelizing, and knowing that there won't be too much of unpredictive instructions down the pipe to schedule? You could have 32 cores in a single CPU that would run things at the lower frequencies needed.
As for the 4004, an interesting way to mark the occasion might have been to design one on an FGA or even on an Arduino.
If you had the cash as a nation huge systems that could work as early digital systems could be bought into from the private sector.
Electro-optical digital imaging to look down from space, what the public is been told about what could be done in 1962 with the IBM 7950 Harvest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
1969 with the 'COINS' (Community On-line Intelligence System)
Some of the changes to the commodity microprocessors could finally be seen in the public with ideas like the 1980's BBN Butterfly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and Voice Funnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Why the change to thousands of inexpensive microprocessors from the traditional 1970's systems? The US gov was invited into per cheap chip sales that got packaged up as new super computer systems with new software and long term support. Thousands of low cost microprocessors still added up to great support contracts.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Cruise missiles (and any number of other applications) used n-bit computers, yes. But those computers were multiple chip affairs, not single chip microprocessors. So, your veteran colleague didn't "cool you down", he mislead you - badly.
Back in the early 1970s, there was no electrical CAD software, design-rule checkers were people, and VLSI lithographic masks were hand-crafted on giant light tables by unsung "rubylith cutters." In early 1970s, there was no VLSI, not even LSI; It was MSI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There where already PROM's that you could program yourself. Sure - it was cumbersome, but doable for those that had a bit knowledge of electronics (and programming machine code).
had a 16 bit 'processor' made by using four of these chips in parallel...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I'm not exactly sure you could buy PROMs back in 1971 (EDIT: the first commercial PROMs came out in 1969), but you can build ROMs with DRL (diode resistor logic), a 74154 decoder and some 74150 (16:1 mux). 2x 74154, 8x 74150s and a bag of diodes will buy you 256 words of 8-bit rom (2kilobit). That's probably sufficient for a 4 bit CPU. Not exactly cheap in 1971, but neither were 4004s. BTW, the 4001 metal mask programmable (meaning you ordered the mask with the bits programmed you wanted from Intel) was 256x8 (2kilobit), so the arrangement I describe is probably not far off what a technician in the 1970s would have used to prototype an Intel 4004 system before ordering the final 4001 ROM from Intel.
There were ways to prototype things without going full retard and ordering an untested maskset, even in 1971. The advantage was that once you built such a 74xx decoder mux rom, you could "rewrite" the ROM contents merely by adding or removing diodes from their relevant positions in the ROM PCB.
I'm sure glad today I can just hit program in Quartus to load rom contents and logic, and I don't have to reach for a soldering iron. Not that I was around back then, I'm just a fan of electronic history. I do however find myself reaching for 74HC/74AHC in modern designs as they are far cheaper than a PLD, and there's still (and always will be) plenty of utility for them if you are familiar and know which ones to reach for.
-puddingpimp
The 4004 is VLSI? I don't think it means what you think it means...
It was LOLXSI.
More likely you would put together a diode matrix with the bootstrap code to start the paper tape reader.
I was writing code for 4 bit microcontrollers less than 20 years ago.
It's always fascinating to track the progression of a 'tools', where creating the tool aids in the development of something more advanced. It's obvious that you cannot design an advanced chip without a computer.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Wrong, wrong, true.