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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.
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.
Try this link: http://www.4004.com/2009/i400x... ( Lajos Kintli's Intel 4004 netlist/layout analyzer and animated logic simulator with complete MCS-4 masks and schematics (Zip, v2.0: updated 11/15/09)
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.
Those mask cutters look like Bond girls
Blocked by proxy:
Malware Found: McAfeeGW: BehavesLike.Win32.Dreform.zz - http://www.4004.com/2009/i400x...
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"
So submit a false positive.
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/...
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.
Wait...
You're using McAfee?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The 4004 is VLSI? I don't think it means what you think it means...
Avast finds nothing wrong. I'm still not unzipping it though.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
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
Not personally, no.