• Hey Guest!
    British Car Forum has been supporting enthusiasts for over 25 years by providing a great place to share our love for British cars. You can support our efforts by upgrading your membership for less than the dues of most car clubs. There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Upgraded members don't see this banner, nor will you see the Google ads that appear on the site.)
Tips
Tips

And a happy 50th birthday to ...

Share this page

NutmegCT

NutmegCT

Great Pumpkin
Bronze
Offline
The Intel 4004 chip!

Intel_C4004.jpg


www.intel.com

Announcing a New Era of Integrated Electronics

Intel’s 4004 microprocessor began as a contract project for Japanese calculator company Busicom. Intel repurchased the rights to the 4004 from Busicom
www.intel.com www.intel.com

Introduced on Nov 15, 1971. Eventually making it possible for us to communicate with our refrigerators!
 
Slow news day, Tom? :devilgrin:
 
Don't make too much fun of him - wouldn't want him to get a chip on his shoulder. :bananawave:
 
'e's just a chip off th' old block. Aught naught energize 'im.
 
A few interesting tidbits on the Intel site:

"In 1971, the Intel® 4004 processor held 2,300 transistors. By 2010, an Intel® Core™ processor with a 32 nm processing die and second-generation high-k metal gate silicon technology held 560 million transistors."

"The Intel® 4004 microprocessor circuit line width was 10 microns, or 10,000 nanometers. Today, the circuit features of Intel® microprocessors range between 45 and 32 nanometers. By comparison, an average human hair is 100,000 nanometers wide."

We've come a long way, baby!

www.intel.com

Announcing a New Era of Integrated Electronics

Intel’s 4004 microprocessor began as a contract project for Japanese calculator company Busicom. Intel repurchased the rights to the 4004 from Busicom
www.intel.com www.intel.com
 
Simplified, but kind of cool to think that millions of basically off/on switches can deliver realistic gaming, let you talk to someone anywhere in the world, make your own animation and on and on.
 
mikephillips said:
Simplified, but kind of cool to think that millions of basically off/on switches can deliver realistic gaming, let you talk to someone anywhere in the world, make your own animation and on and on.
Click to expand...
"Back in the day" when I was a maintenance man on the NORAD SAGE Air Defense computer (IBM Q7), there were no integrated circuits - it was all discrete components (vacuum tubes, resistors, capacitors, diodes, etc). These days, if your display is having issues, you change a card with millions of circuits on the card. Back then, we had to troubleshoot the problem down to the specific "switch" (multivibrator), and-gate, or-gate, etc. I remember how we used to impress visitors by having something like "MERRY CHRISTMAS" scroll across the lights on the maintenance console. We've come a long way, baby!
 
Funny -looks like my 'slow news day' post got some good conversation going!

OK - now back to my home computer:

 
giphy.gif
 
After 25 years in the industry (on the manufacturing side, making some of the newest CPUs) some thoughts. When I moved to the lithography group about 20 years ago we had older Nikon exposure tools (sort of the semiconductor equivalent of a photography enlarger-- only it prints smaller) which used 4004 chips in the control systems. The main lens was about the size of an 800 mm tele lens. Tools like that manufactured the 286 and some of the 386 generation of chips. The entire machine was took up about 1.5 x 1.5 m. The current equivalent (not EUV) is a marvel of the worlds most advance optics, lasers, etc... is HUGE.- and that is only the part in the production area, the light source a huge laser is is a different room, along with all sorts of other support machines. When we get a new litho tool, they are sent in special environmentally controlled containers built exactly to fit into a 747 freight plane.. and the they are moved from airport on special truck brought in just for this job to avoid damage (apparently they even bring their own truck drivers!) Oh and the price for a high end tool is more than an F35 fighter (over $130 million per tool) The Extreme UV exposure systems make that look cheap. When I started Nikon, Canon, ASML Ultratec and a few others all competed to make high end tools. The really high end is basically just ASML today not because of monopolistic behavior, the physics are simply so difficult no one else survived.

Circuit layout for the 4004 was done by hand, pictures of each layer were created using a red tape on a plastic sheet and then photographed using modified cameras which eventually were used to make a "negative" printed on a quartz plate with etched chrome. Modern chips have geometries so small that the normal rules of optics no longer apply so the negative needs to be specially calculated to take this into account. Layouts within the die have become so complicate that it can take several minutes to load the basic layout into a cad program (and that is using very nice servers...)
For a look at what it looks like in the manufacturing area, a bit old but it still looks the same the manufacturing areas.


 
Soon it'll be a technology to defy Newtonian physics. We're getting down into Quantum Physics! "Don't know HOW it works, but it DOES." :LOL:
 
"Don't know how it works, but it does." - it does ... and it doesn't?

Spooky action at a distance!

1200px-Einstein_1921_by_F_Schmutzer_-_restoration.jpg
 
Duality... who needs warp speed then? Just strap yer arse to the errant twin particle and end up someplace else with the other one. :devilish:

Easy-peasey!
 
Speaking of inside stories ...

soul.jpg
 
I have a copy of that book given to me by the Data General regional manager. I sold the first one in Oklahoma City to the notorious Penn Square Bank. We installed the new computer over the Memorial Day weekend and the feds shut them down over the Independence Day weekend. Yes, that's just 5 weeks and we did get paid in time, a little short of a million USD. Ironically enough, my humble credit rating would not stand up to that so we bought it from DG on a letter of credit, from Penn Square Bank, the same kind of paper magic that ultimately sunk the bank. I did get a panic call from Data General accounting office wanting to know if we got the money before it was shut down and also paid them, unfortunately most of it.
Book.jpg
 
I couldn't talk about it when this thread started... but here is some video from inside our chip manufacturing "fab". Linus from Linus Tech Tips got a very rare invitation to visit inside and he seems to enjoy the experience.

 
Back
Top