Today is the 40th anniversary of the official release of Intel 4004, what would the world look like without that?
Not much different, I think. There were other competing companies in the processor market. If Intel didn’t exist we’d probably be discussing the new TI quad-core processors (remember Texas Instruments?). Or Motorola, or something else.
My first Atari used a 6502 processor. It was made by MOS technology, not Intel. It could very well have evolved into something like we have today.
My first Atari used a 6502 processor. It was made by MOS technology, not Intel. It could very well have evolved into something like we have today.
That was the first processor I played with too (Apple II, circa 1982) 
On Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:06:03 GMT
brunomcl <brunomcl@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>
> Not much different, I think. There were other competing companies in
> the processor market. If Intel didn’t exist we’d probably be
> discussing the new TI quad-core processors (remember Texas
> Instruments?). Or Motorola, or something else.
>
> My first Atari used a 6502 processor. It was made by MOS technology,
> not Intel. It could very well have evolved into something like we have
> today.
>
>
Could easily have happened. IBM were considering buying Atari and basing
their PC on it. Wish they had. The graphics would have been a lot
better.
–
Graham Davis, Bracknell, Berks.
openSUSE 11.4 (64-bit); KDE 4.7.3; AMD Phenom II X2 550 Processor;
Video: nVidia GeForce 210 (using nVidia driver);
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Yes, I have fond memories of it. 16 KB RAM, 8-bit color standard screen, or 256-line 1-color graphics (more with dithering), BASIC programs, tape recorder, sprites, register PEEK/POKE, etc. The emotion when I turned it on for the first time in 1978 and saw the white “READY” prompt on blue background… The endless possibilities, a whole new world unfolding before my eyes. Unforgettable.
The appearance of the Intel 4004 was a big milestone. The world would be different without it. The japanese company Busicom, manufacturer of desktop calculators, ordered about a dozen different chips from Intel. This was the opportunity for Ted Hoff to design a programmable chip to take all functions of twelve different hardcoded chips. It was, in fact, the invention of the CPU.
The 4004 with about 2300 Transistors and a clock frequency between 500 and 740 khz had about the same computing power as the Eniac Supercomputer weighing 30 tons.
The 6502 hit the market in 1975, 4 years later. It was derived from the Motorola 6800.