4 ms·

The Story of the Intel 4004

30 points by shawndumas 12y ago

davidw 12y ago
Missing from that page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Faggin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Faggin
ghshephard 12y ago
A better page (Ironically?) is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_4004 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_4004
- cbd1984 12y ago
  Not ironically, necessarily, because there is no reason the Wikipedia page should be worse for this topic. It is both technical and attracts controversy (of the "No, my system was the first single-chip CPU!" variety, especially from partisans of systems with multiple-chip CPUs...) so it's kept at a high quality, to disprove the partisans and to undo vandalism. Morgellons is another example of this in action: The majority of the world doesn't distinguish it from delusional parasitosis (when people think they have bugs on them, but really don't) but there's a full-blown full-color bells-and-whistles Conspiracy Theory surrounding the topic, so the editors have to be on their toes citing to good sources to keep the nuts from scoring points in the talk pages (which are entertaining to read). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgellons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgellons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Morgellons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Morgellons
  - DanBC 12y ago
    "The nuts"?
    - cbd1984 12y ago
      > "The nuts"? The people who believe the Conspiracy Theories, which is a group orthogonal to the people who actually have delusional parasitosis. Thinking you have bugs on you doesn't make you nuts; thinking you have artificial fibers growing out of your skin doesn't make you nuts; however, thinking it's due to chemicals being sprayed by jets under the control of the NWO Zionist Illuminati cabal is nuts.
drallison 12y ago
I wrote the native-code assembler for the 4004/4040 Intel Microprocessor development system which was compatible with the cross assembler system that ran on IBM 360 hardware. Tom Pittman wrote a eprom-resident assembler for the 4004 development board notable because the opcodes were chosen to allow the table in which they were stored to be executable code in order to save space. Coding for the 4-bit limited resource 4004/4040 necessarily involved being very close to the machine. At the 2nd Asilomar Microprocessor Workshop the virtues of coding for the 4004 in split-octal was hotly debated with Matt Biewer of Pro Log, an early embedded systems house, arguing in the affirmative. Those of use who supported higher-level programming languages were in the lunatic fringe. Some even thought that assemblers were confusing.
- aswanson 12y ago
  Wow, it must be amazing to write "Wrote first assembler for first microprocessor" on your CV. Kudos. Some even thought that assemblers were confusing Hilarious.
- alecco 12y ago
  With your close historic perspective, what do you think of SIMD and CUDA?
agumonkey 12y ago
Looking at intel history it's funny how the iAPX 432 was huge technologically but failed to the interim 8086 which invaded the market with pragmatism, similar to Apple's Lisa and Macintosh.
- Narishma 12y ago
  Regardless of how huge technologically it was, whatever that means, it failed because it was slower and more expensive than contemporary x86 processors.
kens 12y ago
That page is a bit too much marketing fluff for my linking. A couple other interesting pages on the 4004: * An oral history from the developers [1]. One interesting part is that Intel procrastinates for months on developing the chip. Faggin gets hired to work on the chip, and Shima flies in from Japan the very next day to check on progress. He's very upset to find out that nothing has happened and starts yelling at Faggin, who just got there. They eventually work together to get the chip finished. * Federico Faggin's website [2] with his perspective on the chip. [1] http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/Intel_4004_2/102658187.05.01.acc.pdf http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_Histo... [2] http://www.intel4004.com/ http://www.intel4004.com/ And I should mention that Texas Instruments built and announced the TMX-1795 microprocessor chip before the 4004. This chip's architecture and instruction set was basically identical to the 8008 (since both were copies of the Datapoint 2200). Texas Instruments patented the TMX-1795 (which was a hugely valuable patent) and then abandoned the chip because it didn't work well.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- chiph 12y ago
  I'm almost through with reading Walter Isaacson's The Innovators and he covers the patent issue - Intel and TI both recognized that their respective innovations were essentially simultaneous, and decided to cross-license each other's patents. And then remarkably, opened up licensing to other firms for a nominal fee. Without this, the industry could not have grown as fast as it did.

30 points by shawndumas 12y ago

davidw 12y ago

Missing from that page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Faggin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federico_Faggin

ghshephard 12y ago

A better page (Ironically?) is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_4004 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_4004

cbd1984 12y ago
Not ironically, necessarily, because there is no reason the Wikipedia page should be worse for this topic. It is both technical and attracts controversy (of the "No, my system was the first single-chip CPU!" variety, especially from partisans of systems with multiple-chip CPUs...) so it's kept at a high quality, to disprove the partisans and to undo vandalism. Morgellons is another example of this in action: The majority of the world doesn't distinguish it from delusional parasitosis (when people think they have bugs on them, but really don't) but there's a full-blown full-color bells-and-whistles Conspiracy Theory surrounding the topic, so the editors have to be on their toes citing to good sources to keep the nuts from scoring points in the talk pages (which are entertaining to read). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgellons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgellons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Morgellons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Morgellons
- DanBC 12y ago
  "The nuts"?
  - cbd1984 12y ago
    > "The nuts"? The people who believe the Conspiracy Theories, which is a group orthogonal to the people who actually have delusional parasitosis. Thinking you have bugs on you doesn't make you nuts; thinking you have artificial fibers growing out of your skin doesn't make you nuts; however, thinking it's due to chemicals being sprayed by jets under the control of the NWO Zionist Illuminati cabal is nuts.

drallison 12y ago

I wrote the native-code assembler for the 4004/4040 Intel Microprocessor development system which was compatible with the cross assembler system that ran on IBM 360 hardware. Tom Pittman wrote a eprom-resident assembler for the 4004 development board notable because the opcodes were chosen to allow the table in which they were stored to be executable code in order to save space. Coding for the 4-bit limited resource 4004/4040 necessarily involved being very close to the machine. At the 2nd Asilomar Microprocessor Workshop the virtues of coding for the 4004 in split-octal was hotly debated with Matt Biewer of Pro Log, an early embedded systems house, arguing in the affirmative. Those of use who supported higher-level programming languages were in the lunatic fringe. Some even thought that assemblers were confusing.

aswanson 12y ago
Wow, it must be amazing to write "Wrote first assembler for first microprocessor" on your CV. Kudos. Some even thought that assemblers were confusing Hilarious.
alecco 12y ago
With your close historic perspective, what do you think of SIMD and CUDA?

agumonkey 12y ago

Looking at intel history it's funny how the iAPX 432 was huge technologically but failed to the interim 8086 which invaded the market with pragmatism, similar to Apple's Lisa and Macintosh.

Narishma 12y ago
Regardless of how huge technologically it was, whatever that means, it failed because it was slower and more expensive than contemporary x86 processors.

kens 12y ago

That page is a bit too much marketing fluff for my linking. A couple other interesting pages on the 4004: * An oral history from the developers [1]. One interesting part is that Intel procrastinates for months on developing the chip. Faggin gets hired to work on the chip, and Shima flies in from Japan the very next day to check on progress. He's very upset to find out that nothing has happened and starts yelling at Faggin, who just got there. They eventually work together to get the chip finished. * Federico Faggin's website [2] with his perspective on the chip. [1] http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/Intel_4004_2/102658187.05.01.acc.pdf http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_Histo... [2] http://www.intel4004.com/ http://www.intel4004.com/ And I should mention that Texas Instruments built and announced the TMX-1795 microprocessor chip before the 4004. This chip's architecture and instruction set was basically identical to the 8008 (since both were copies of the Datapoint 2200). Texas Instruments patented the TMX-1795 (which was a hugely valuable patent) and then abandoned the chip because it didn't work well.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
chiph 12y ago
I'm almost through with reading Walter Isaacson's The Innovators and he covers the patent issue - Intel and TI both recognized that their respective innovations were essentially simultaneous, and decided to cross-license each other's patents. And then remarkably, opened up licensing to other firms for a nominal fee. Without this, the industry could not have grown as fast as it did.