Microprocessors through the Ages

A brief history of the microprocessor

Thomas G. CleaverUniversity of Louisville

Department of Electrical and Computer EngineeringOctober 15, 2012

Year Motorola Intel Notes

<1970 The Dark Ages

1971 4004 First microprocessor.4-bit.Add/subtract only.2300 transistors.108 kHz clock speed.

1972 8008 First 8-bit processor.

1974 8080 Better 8-bit processor.

1975 6800 Synertek 6502 (Apple II, Pet, Kim I, Commodore 64).Zilog Z80 (TRS 80) – Tomahawk cruise missile.Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak

Year Motorola Intel Notes

1979 6800068008

80868088

8088: 8-bit data bus, 16-bit registers; used in IBM PC (1982).8086: 16-bit data bus, 16-bit registers.68000: 16-bit data bus, 32-bit registers; used in LISA (1983), Macintosh (1984), Amiga (1985), Palm Pilot PDA (1996), TI-89 calculator (1998), space shuttle

1982 68020 80286 Cache memory.80286: Still 16-bit data bus and registers.68020: 32-bit data bus and registers.IBM PC introduced.Bill Gates.

Year Motorola Intel Notes

1985 68030 80386 More cache, faster.80386: 32-bit address bus, 32-bit data bus.Microsoft Windows introduced.

1989 68040 80486 More cache, faster, on-board coprocessor.

1993 68060 Pentium Superscalar, superpipelined.

1997 PowerPC Pentium II

PowerPC: Abandons CISC and introduces RISC architecture

1999 Pentium III

Power Mac introduced, using PowerPC.

2000 Pentium IV

Ultrapipelined, 1 GHz

2001 Itanium 64-bit

Year Motorola Intel Notes

2003 PowerPC G5

PowerPC G5: 58 million transistors, 2 GHz, 64-bit registers and buses.

2004 Motorola spins off Freescale and stops making 68000-series microprocessors.

2006 Core 2 Solo & Duo

64-bit, duo has 2 processor cores, 4 MB level 2 cache, 253 million transistors, 3 GHz.

2007 Core 2 Quad

4 processor cores.

2009 Core i7,Proto-type

Core i7: Up to 4 processor cores, 2-3 GHz, 6-8 MB cache.Prototype: 48 processor cores, 1.3 billion transistors.

Microprocessor feature size and its effects

Year Intel Chip FeatureSize

OperatingVoltage

Notes

1971 4004 10 microns 15 V 1 micron = 10-6 m

1974 8080 6 microns 5 V

1985 80386 1.5 microns 5 V

1997 Pentium II 350 nm 5 V 1 nm = 10-9 m

1999 Pentium III 250 nm 2 V Power density issues

2006 Core Solo 65 nm 1.5 V? Quantum tunneling

2007 Dual & Quad 45 nm 1.2 V

2009 32 nm 0.85 V

2012 22 nm ?

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