The Birth of Chipzilla
abortretry.fail
abortretry.fail
Companies don’t have friends. But they seem quite cozy?
This decision has been taken not much after the launch of the IBM PC/AT and also when Intel was preparing the launch of 80386, so they were pretty certain that they can make a lot of money from CPUs, even if they abandon their traditional market.
It is likely that Intel has reached that point where such a decision had to be taken because for many years they must have underestimated the competence of the Japanese, by believing that they are not innovating, but only copying what the Americans do, exactly like now many Americans claim about the Chinese. When they have realized that actually the quality of the Japanese DRAMs is higher and their semiconductor plants have much better fabrication yields, it was too late.
Before that, Intel and Mostek could charge an arm and a leg for their DRAMs, obtaining handsome profits.
It was designed for implementing a desktop calculator, not a general-purpose computer. With some effort it could be repurposed to implement a simple controller, but it was completely unsuitable for implementing the processor of a general-purpose programmable computer.
For implementing a general-purpose processor, it is likely that using MSI TTL integrated circuits would have been simpler than using Intel 4004.
Intel 8008 (which implemented the architecture of Datapoint 2200), was the first commercially-available monolithic processor that could be used to make a general-purpose computer, and which has actually been used for this.
Around the same time with the first monolithic processors, Intel has invented the ultraviolet-erasable programmable read-only memory.
The EPROM invented by Intel has been almost as important as the microprocessors for enabling the appearance of cheap personal computers, by avoiding the need for other kinds of non-volatile memories for storing programs (e.g. punched-tape readers or magnetic core memories), which would have been more expensive than the entire computer.
Bipolar PROMs were initially used mainly to store microprograms for CPUs with microprogrammed control and for implementing various kinds of programmable logic, in which role they were later replaced by PLAs, then by PALs.
I do not think that there has ever been any kind of computer that has stored in bipolar PROMs programs that were usable during normal operation, except perhaps some kind of embedded controllers designed before microprocessors become widespread, together with their associated EPROMs.
By the time when the Intel EPROMs like 1702 and 2708 have appeared (with a capacity of 256 bytes, then of 1 kbyte), typical bipolar PROMs had capacities of either 32 bytes or 128 bytes.
In that space you could put at most some kind of initial loader that would load a real bootstrapping program from something like a punched-tape reader. This kind of solution was used in some minicomputers, replacing the introducing of such an initial loader from console keys, by the operator. Such minicomputers were still at least an order of magnitude more expensive than the first computers with microprocessors, mainly due to the expensive peripherals required for a working system.
The Altair 680 had sockets for four 256 byte PROMs. One was for the debugger, but a popular option for the other three was the VTL-2 (very tiny language) interpreter. Pretty amazing that they fit a Basic-like language in just 768 bytes, though implementing some language in the 510 byte boot sector has become a popular hobby.
Moreover, in the beginning Intel was also the main producer of mask-programmable ROMs, which were launched at the same time with the corresponding EPROM, with the 23xx mask-programmable ROMs corresponding to the 27xx EPROMs.
All these part numbers belonged to a system used by Intel, where the first digit was "1" for PMOS, "2" for NMOS and "3" for bipolar, with the second digit being the kind of IC, e.g. 21xx for RAM, 23xx for mask-programmable ROM, 27xx for UV-EPROMs and 28xx for electrically-erasable PROMs.
Other manufacturers have started the production of memories after a delay of a few years and most of them have made memories compatible with those introduced by Intel and they have kept the 23xx and 27xx Intel part numbers.
"That’s when the Intel® 4004 became the first general-purpose programmable processor on the market—a "building block" that engineers could purchase and then customize with software to perform different functions in a wide variety of electronic devices." https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/history/museum-story...
"The 4004 would replace that system with a general-purpose chip that could be mass produced and then programmed through its software to perform specific functions, such as those of a desktop calculator. That idea could make computing cheaper, more powerful and smaller in one fell swoop. It could, in other words, facilitate the modern information age. In 1969, the Nippon Calculating Machine Corporation approached Intel to design 12 custom chips for its new Busicom 141-PF printing calculator. Intel's engineers proposed a new design of just four chips, including one that could be programmed for use. That programmable chip, later known as the Intel 4004, became the first general-purpose microprocessor." https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/history/virtual-vaul...
Moreover, you can be pretty certain that whoever has written that text has never read the datasheets of Intel 4004, to be able to evaluate whether it was "general purpose" or not.
Even at its launch in 1971, when Intel has begun to offer for sale the 4004 because Busicom was unable to pay the price desired by Intel for 4004, the Intel marketing has attempted to present the 4004 as much more general purpose than it really was, in order to find customers for it, in order to ensure the profitability that could not be provided by Busicom.
During its design, 4004 has never been intended to be general-purpose, because the plan was to sell it to a single customer. Only after the delivery to the intended customer the Intel marketing has made great efforts to find other possible applications for it.
Now of course all of these are on the macro level. If you look closely the collapse of Intel would cause severe disruption both on the business and on the geopolitics fronts.
The 3101 held 64 bits of data (eight bytes, each representing values from 0 to 255).