HISTORY OF THE MICRO PROCESSOR

                  HISTORY OF THE MICRO PROCESSOR

The microprocessor  which was invented  in the early 70s has a  very  interesting history   full of fierce competition ,and advanced technology .The micro processor incorporates most or all the functions of the central processing unit, on a  single integrated  circuit using Binary Coded Decimals(BCD).INTEL,  came out with the first IBM and chose 8080 processor for the brains of the first cotmputer,since then INTEL remains the perceived leader of the micro processor though other contenders have developed their own  technology. The following chips are considered Dinosaurs of the computer world.

            From 1971-1977, 4004 was INTELS first micro processor. This break through intervention powered the busicom calculator and paved the way for embedding intelligence in computer. The 8008 was twice as powerful as the 4004.The 8080 became the brains of the first personal computer.1978 saw the advent of the 8086.It was a 16 bit processor, the chip contained 29,000 transistors and 20 address lines that gave it the ability to contain 1MB of RAM .In 1979 came INTEL 8088,it was identical to 8080  with only difference being the way it handled the address lines .. In 1982 INTELs 286 originally known as 80286 came. It was a microprocessor of 16 bit with 134000 transistors capable of addressing up to16 MB of  RAM. It was the first real processor to introduce the concept of protected mode, this is the ability to do multi task, having different program run separately but at same time. It ran 8, 10,12.5 MHz but later 20MHZ.from 1985-1990 INTEL 386  It was a 32 bit with  275000 transistors. It was the first chip to do instructional  pipelining which allowed the processor start working on the first instruction  before the previous is even completed

1992 saw INTEL   486DX which provided a coloured computer for the first time and could do desk top publishing at a significant speed. IT was the first to offer a built in math coprocessor with speed up computing. 1993 saw   the arrival of INTEL Pentium processor.

 This processor allowed computers to more easily incorporate real world data such as speech, hand writing, photographic images

1995 NTEL Pentium 2 processor came with 7.5 million transistors; this   technology was designed specifically to process video audio and graphics data efficiently. It also incorporated a high speed cache memory chip. With this chip users could capture, edit and share digital photos with friends family through the internet. 

1998-2000 saw the advent of Pentium 3 and 4 which accelerated innovations specifically designed for work stations, featuring 70 instructions increasing performance of advanced imaging. Later in 2001-2003 came the INTEL Itanium and Pentium M processors