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The Intel 4004 Microprocessor Turns 44

Posted by timothy on from the what's-a-couple-of-zeros-anyhow dept.

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."

13 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. just imagine.... by ganjadude · · Score: 2, Funny

    a beowulf cluster of 4004s!

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  2. no electrical CAD software by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Weird, tell it to IBM that was routing ICs and backplanes in the 1960s by computer.

    1. Re:no electrical CAD software by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      1967

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      look at some of the stuff hanging on the walls. The problem is that the text references I have about what IBM was doing in the 1960s is on dead trees only.

  3. Commercially significant but 2nd fiddle to TTL by kyubre · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Commercially significant but 2nd fiddle to TTL by toonces33 · · Score: 2

      Same here - I remember all of those TTL things.

      A few years after this, we got some *very* early 8086 chips on an educational discount. We breadboarded the thing by attaching power, clock, and wired up the memory lines to make it look like it was just reading NOP instructions from ever address, and then watched the address lines to see the thing count up.

    2. Re:Commercially significant but 2nd fiddle to TTL by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

      I got into electronics as a teenager and even took a few courses in college, but I never got far with it. Didn't have the information and money to get beyond the basics. Fast forward 30 years, the Internet has plenty of information and as senior I.T. technician I got plenty of money. I'm fiddling around with 555 timer circuits and looking up designs for a TTL computer in. Rather than buying a handful of parts from Radio Shack (back then) I'm ordering lots of 100 from Jameco to build up my parts inventory.

    3. Re:Commercially significant but 2nd fiddle to TTL by kyubre · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Similar story on this end. I learned all kinds of electronics as teenager and then went off, first working on Air Force Radar for a number of years and then transitioning to software engineering as a civilian. A couple of years ago, I got my highly coveted treasure trove of TTL parts trays from my dad. Started playing around again on the same old breadboards, discovered SparkFun, EBay, and rediscovered Jameco.

      Seems nobody personally knows much of anything about the 4004 anymore, but Don Lancaster's TTL cookbook is just as applicable today as it was 30 years ago.

      --
      Nothing evolves faster than the word of god in the minds of men who think themselves divinely inspired.
    4. Re:Commercially significant but 2nd fiddle to TTL by GrahamCox · · Score: 2

      I was the same but with the 4000 CMOS range. OK, it was slower, but it was far less finicky about fanout, fan-in, power supply voltages and general interfacing. If I needed a fast section of circuitry I might use TTL, but CMOS elsewhere. Just so much less fuss. By the mid-80s it had caught up in speed and eventually surpassed it.

      CPU-wise, it was 6502 FTW, though the 8051 wasn't bad as a stop-gap until the 680x0 was cheap enough. 4004? A bit before my time, but also pretty hard to use and do much with compared to the 6502 and other 8-bit devices.

  4. Re:4 bit computing at the time of 128 bit computin by viperidaenz · · Score: 2

    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.

  5. Rubylith was state of the art! by Terje+Mathisen · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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"
  6. Re:4 bit computing at the time of 128 bit computin by AHuxley · · Score: 2

    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"
  7. In early 1970s, there was no VLSI, not even LSI; by bsharma · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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/...

  8. Used to service Data General Nova 4X by advocate_one · · Score: 2

    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.