History of Microprocessor: Microprocessor took a long time to change its configuration, capability, flexibility and it has been going to change day by day to make it small and provide more functionality through a single processor.
Vacuum Tube: On November 16, 1904, British engineer John Ambrose Fleming invents and patents the first vacuum tube. ENIAC was the first computer to use Vacuum tube. It occupies the whole room, generates a lot of heat. Vacuum tube function as a switch and amplifier in the computer.
Transistors: Transistors was invented by William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain at Bell Laboratories on December 16, 1947.It functions as a switch to allow or block the current. Due to the invention of transistor CPU size gets reduced. They consumed less electricity and produced less heat and faster and more efficient.
Starting with Intel Processors: Intel founded by Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce on July 18, 1968. The company bought the rights to use the name “Intel”, short name for integrated electronics.
4-bit processor: They invented a microprocessor chip Intel 4004, having transistors 2300, clock rate 740 KHz, Memory up to 4096 bytes.
8-bit processor: Intel 8080(1974) microprocessor is broken through for the computer industry. It was 10 times faster than Intel 8008(1972).
Transistors=4500
Clock rate =2 MHz
Feature size =6 Microns.
Intel 16 bit processor: Processors are 8086, 8088, 80186, 80286.
Intel 80286(1989) microprocessor contain
Transistors=1, 34,000
Clock rate =6 to 25 MHz
Memory=up to 16 MB
Feature size =1.5 Microns
Intel 32 bit processor: First time the concept of Cache was introduced in Intel 80486.
Transistors=11, 80,235, Clock rate =16 to 100 MHz, Memory=up to 4 GB,
Feature size =1 Microns, Cache size=8to 16 kb
With the passage of time, Intel modified its technology and invented Intel Pentium, Intel Pentium Pro, Intel Core processor, Intel i3, Intel i5 and Intel i7.
More processors working on different platforms are:
Clover town and Woodcrest are 64-bit processor->used for Server & workstation. They used 65 nm technologies.
Conroe (65-Technolgy): Used for Desktop Computing.
Merom (65-Technolgy): Used for mobile computing. It introduced on July 27, 2006.
