Intel ships billionth chip

Silicon Valley Business Journal ^ | June 9, 2003 | staff

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

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2:11 PM PDT Monday

Intel ships billionth chip

Remember the 8086? That was Intel Corp.'s first microprocessor for personal computers in 1978, back when a "hand-held" was a transistor radio, computers were immobile mainframes, and the Internet was a project by a handful of research scientists.

A quarter-century later, Intel has shipped its 1 billionth computer chip, according to figures compiled by semiconductor industry analyst firm Mercury Research and verified by Intel.

"From the 8086 to today's Intel Pentium 4 processor, Intel Xeon and Intel Centrino mobile technology, the Intel architecture has brought the benefits of digital intelligence to people around the world, making it the most successful computer architecture in the history of computing," says Pat Gelsinger, Intel senior vice president and chief technology officer.

Introduced in 1978, the original 16-bit 8086 chip contained only 29,000 transistors and ran at 5 megahertz. The original IBM PC shipped with a version of the 8086, the 8088 in 1982, ushering in a new age of PC computing. In comparison, today's Pentium 4 processor contains 55 million transistors and runs more than 600 times as fast at 3.06 gigahertz.

Based on combined desktop, laptop and server shipments, Mercury Research calculates that Intel reached the milestone in April, roughly 25 years after the debut of the first 8086 microprocessor on June 8, 1978.

Mercury Research calculates that the next billion X86 CPUs could come as early as 2007.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

And the world has changed as a result!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

OFFICIAL BUMP(TOPIC)LIST

[Pistolshot]

Stay tuned. More to come.

[fporretto]

Remember the 8086? That was Intel Corp.'s first microprocessor for personal computers in 1978, back when a "hand-held" was a transistor radio, computers were immobile mainframes, and the Internet was a project by a handful of research scientists.

What, the 8080 and 8085 don't count? They appeared in several million personal computers in the years before the IBM PC. Mercury Research appears to assume that only processors capable of running MS-DOS, the system that IBM put on its offering, should qualify.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com

[RadioAstronomer]

Don't forget the 4004, 4040, or 8008. You are correct, many an S-100 computer was sold that used the 8080 or the Zilog Z-80.

[krb]

They appeared in several million personal computers

Are you sure that's not a tad high?

[krb]

If this article were really about the personal computer being around 25 years old, I'd have to start whining about the 6800, 6502, 68k, etc. But since it appears that the article is strictly about a major milestone for the winner of the PC wars, I'll celebrate with them :-)

[krb]

In comparison, today's Pentium 4 processor contains 55 million transistors and runs more than 600 times as fast at 3.06 gigahertz.

That reminds me...I ordered a new laptop that should be here by tomorrow or Friday. It's got a beautious 16.1" screen and a hyperthreaded 3.06GHz processor in it...drool...

Should speed up those all-nighter video renderings quite a bit compared to my current 1GHzx2 setup...

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

That reminds me...I ordered a new laptop that should be here by tomorrow or Friday. It's got a beautious 16.1" screen and a hyperthreaded 3.06GHz processor in it...drool...

Tell us more!

Who has a 16" screen and that hot of a processor in a laptop?

[krb]

It's actually a great story (I hope...as the end hasn't been written yet!)

I had been drooling over the Sony Vaio laptop with the 16.1" 1600x1200 screen for months, since I am into video editing and screen real estate is a premium for what I do (my desktop workstation is a dual proc 1GHz box with a Matrox Parhelia Triplehead adapter). The ability to get something close to my desktop setup was a must.

So the Sony Vaio GRX line seemed perfect. 16.1" of 1600x1200 beauty. None of that 15" 1400x1050 or 1280x1024 stuff. For months I had been building configurations on Sony's website and finally last Thursday I made the decision to execute a buy. I worked everything out with my business partner and we called Sony the next day to get the machine and lo and behold, they removed the 16.1" screen as an option and left it with the 16" screen that would only do 1280x1024.

The I tried to convince the Sony guy that he could have my $3000 right then and there if he would simply find me one unit with the nicer screen that I could have bought had I called the day before. He spent 15 minutes trying to convince me that I could use the 1280 screen just as well...

I finally convinced him that since the 1600x1200 screen has been really the most important aspect of my desire to get the Vaio, and since that caused me not to look at competitive offerings from Dell, IBM, Toshiba, HP, or Compaq, I really had to start over and build a matrix of my needs and essentially work it again from scratch.

I discovered a nice Dell (the Inspiron 8500) that had an available 15.4" widescreen that would do a whopping 1920x1024 or something like that (enough dots, BTW to accurately show a 1080i or 720p HDTV picture). Then I dug around the net some more and found out that there is a 2nd tier of laptop manufacturers who make their own laptops that are more feature-rich than the big boys, and I looked into the Sager 8887-V.

I read a bit about it and decided that since they have a 30 day no questions asked money back garantee, and they offer waranties as nice as the big boys, I went ahead and configured a machine with more features than I would have received on the Sony.

For the same $3100 I was ready to spend on a Sony with a 2.2GHz Mobile Pentium 4 with 512G of memory and a 40GB slow hard drive and a DVD-R, I was able to get a 3.06GHz HT P4, 1G of RAM, 60 GB of fast disk, DVD-R AND another DVD-ROM, TV Tuner, and built-in 802.11b (don't have to burn a PCMCIA slot)...

It's not "name-brand" so I guess I am taking a risk, but the machine is a real screamer...we'll see!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I've seen the Sager ads but was afraid to try them.

I just picked up a nice VAIO AMD 2000+ powered with 40 G drive for under $1000 at Fry's a couple weeks ago for my wife!

Seems to be a good machine also!

[krb]

Yeah, I know what you mean. For $1500 or so I could have gotten 90% of what I needed. But the reason I was asked to add a laptop to my mix is that the client that I do most of my work for now has asked me to work onsite more often and it looks like I am not going to get to use my Parhelia setup as much, and I am calculatably more efficient with the large desktop setup.

We'll see how it goes...plus, with XP, the ATI 128MB video that is built into the laptop will support dual-head desktop out of the video port (a feature, I am told, that many laptops support these days)...

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

We'll see how it goes...plus, with XP, the ATI 128MB video that is built into the laptop will support dual-head desktop out of the video port (a feature, I am told, that many laptops support these days)...

Got to check mine for that!

[Walt Griffith]

Yes I have a personal computer with an 8086 chip. Built in 1983. It only weighs 100 lbs not including the monitor. It is a very personal thing when you have to move this baby around.

It is a Seattle Computer Products Gazelle S-100. Srreaming at 8mhz with 128 kbytes of static ram and two (2, count them) 8 inch 1.25 Mitsubishi disks running either MSDOS 1.25 Copyright Seattle Computer Products 1978-1982) or MSDOS 2.0 Copyright Microsoft 1983.

Actually this computer has not ran since 1995. I am in the process of getting it going again since it is some what of a historical piece.

[krb]

Yes I have a personal computer with an 8086 chip.

Are you sure you have a 1983 computer with an 8086? IBM didn't use the 8086 in a computer until the PS/2 Model 30 came out in like 1985 or so.

IBM used the 8088 (8-bit data bus) until the IBM PC AT.

[Walt Griffith]

Yes I am sure. You see IBM did not build the first 8086 DOS Computer. Seattle Computer Products did built the first DOS Computer. They built the first 8086 S-100 board in 1978. At that time they did not even have an operating system for it. The only software they had for it was a BASIC program that they could program the board directly. Seattle Computer Products wrote SCP-1 DOS in 1980 I believe. Latter it was renamed 86DOS or DOS86. Latter the rights to market it non exclusively were sold to Microsoft for $20,000 and royalty fees I was told by Brian Birtland of SCP.

I have a page at cornhusker.net/~wgriff/seattle with more info if you care to look. I have not completed it yet, but does give a bit of information on the Seattle Computer that started the whole ball rolling in what we use today.

Regards

Walt

[krb]

Yes I am sure. You see IBM did not build the first 8086 DOS Computer. Seattle Computer Products did

WE'RE NOT WORTHY!!!