Technology has progressed a lot in recent years because it has brought us a series of very important changes that have allowed us to evolve in a large number of currently existing sectors, but if we talk about processors there is one that has represented a big change as it was. the world's first truly functional microprocessor. In this case we are not talking about 4004 or 8008, but rather about Intel 8080which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year, a moment the company used to reflect and compare what current processors look like with what they used to be. primer microprocessor Really commercial.
There are a large number of reasons why a company like Intel can celebrate even if it is not currently going through its best moment, and that is that during its journey it has developed some of the components that have represented a before and after in the industry. . Some of their most legendary processors are starting to reach an age that is beginning to command respect, because even though we know that this is a technology that has actually been around for a relatively short time (if we compare it to many others), half a century is quite a considerable amount.
Intel celebrates half a century of its first truly functional processor
In recent years we have seen how processors have included a series of changes in their architecture, making them much more powerful than their previous generations and even implementing several different types of cores within the same silicon. But we can't forget those who started it all, which is why Intel is rejoicing, since its 8080 processor “made the microprocessor market a reality” according to Federico Faggin, Intel's chief designer of this microprocessor and its predecessors .
This 8-bit chip was much more efficient, more powerful and more flexible than the first presented by the brand, the Intel 4004 and the 8008as it was capable of performing 290,000 operations per second (10 times more than the 8008), while with the 40 pin configuration it had it made it easier to connect to other components compared to the 18 pin design pins of the 8008, while It also integrated the functions of the support chips necessary for the previous two, making it a true single-chip microprocessor.
Today, fifty years later, the company once again evokes this chip which has become the pillar of a large number of devices, such as the first commercialized arcade game integrating a microprocessor, the personal computers of the time like the MITS Altair 8800 and even the first electronic cash registers integrating this Intel 8080.
For this reason and as a reason for celebration, the company has taken a look back so that we can see what are the differences between this processor and the most current ones, which shows us the large number of changes that they have had at the over the years. Transistors, for example, have gone from the 4,500 to 6,000 that these microprocessors incorporated to around 17.8 billion, which is the most impressive data with which we can see the progress they have made over the last 50 years.
