Talk:Intel 4004
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[edit] 4004-driven traffic lights
I'm a little unsure about the following passage, deleted (and slightly modified) from a previous revision of this article:
- For calculator and controller use the 4004 was a very effective design. As of 2003, there are reportedly even a few traffic light control systems still in use built with these chips.
If someone cares to do research on this, feel free :-). It would certainly be an interesting anecdote. Wernher 23:35, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
[edit] Corrected clock speed again
After a careful editor changed the 4004's maximum clock speed to the proper value of 740 kHz, someone changed it back to the widely quoted but completely incorrect value of 108 kHz. I've just fixed it again, and I added a stern explanatory comment explaining why 740 kHz is correct and should not be changed.
Unfortunately, the incorrect value of 108 kHz is all over the place now, including within some very reputable sources. Even Intel's own pages on the 4004 list it. But Intel's original 4004 data sheets all say that its minimum clock period is 1350 nanoseconds, which means the maximum clock speed is 740 kHz. (I have checked data sheets from 1971, 1973, and 1977; they all agree on this.) The only possible explanation for the widely-quoted value of 108 kHz is that the first page of these data sheets don't list a clock speed, but instead list a 10.8 microsecond instruction cycle. (This instruction cycle requires 8 clock cycles.) At some point a writer must have somehow misinterpreted this value as a 108 kHz clock speed.
Hopefully my comment in the page will keep this from happening again here, but correcting the whole world is going to take a while. :-)
--Colin Douglas Howell 00:13, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- Thanks for fixing! I corrected the 4004 clock rate figure in the Hertz article as well. --Wernher 00:29, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
[edit] 4004 vs. other "first µP" candidates...
I'm not a big fan of these "who was first" fights; in my view, they often obscure the real significance of the events in question. But I also don't like the current phrasing, which implies that the 4004's status as "first microprocessor" may not be fully deserved and that other similar devices already existed. This seems like an unnecessary distortion of history.
The idea of using large-scale integrated circuits to shrink computer processors had certainly occurred to many people, of course, but the Intel designers do seem to have been the first to make a one-chip processor intended to be generally applicable to a variety of problems and to introduce it to a broad market.
To make this clear, I would describe the 4004 as "the first commercial single-chip microprocessor".
--Colin Douglas Howell 01:40, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- Second that. I made the (slightly more unambiguous, at the risk of being corrected...) edit, and split the F14 CADC material off into its own article (where it should be further elaborated upon, interesting as it most certainly is). --Wernher 20:52, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)
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- I disagree. The CADC was not multi-chip. The central processor itself had everything (and more) that the 4004 did, EXCEPT for a program counter. The PC on the CADC architecture was placed on the RAS (e.g. RAM) and ROM chips. This was to facilitate multi-processing. To discount the CADC because of this is debatable. I think this problem could be solved by careful use of the word "first". As a computer historian, I learned long ago never to use the word as an adjective when describing an artifact from computing history because you will eventually and invariably be proven wrong.
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- I think the wording I implemented is proper, and furthermore I think the CADC reference should be completely omitted as this is a page about the 4004. There should be a footnote or a link to the CADC entry. As far as the second point ("generally applicable to a variety of problems") this is true, but these caveats should be explicitly expressed in the description because they matter. I can be reached at sellam@vintagetech.com --Sellam Ismail 07:47, 11 November 2005 (PST)
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- After having studied the matter more thoroughly, I am now aware of the things you point out here. However, I don't fully understand your having a problem with the mention of the CADC in this article---unless you are simply of the opinion that the CADC information in the intro pgph kind of clutters up the article a bit? If so, moving most of the CADC info into a footnote would be no problem. As for further elaborations of "who was first", FWIW, please see the CADC talk page. --Wernher 06:34, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
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[edit] Adware/spyware warning
I moved the "adware warning" against http://www.intel4004.com/ from the ext lk description itself into an intra-section footnote: "Site has been reported to contain adware/spyware." If someone cares to investigate this further, please do so. --Wernher 22:52, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
- There seems to be a web bug on the home page of http://www.intel4004.com/, namely
http://www.intel4004.com/images/blank_trans.gif, this has privacy implications although whether this web bug can be classified as adware and/or spyware I am unsure. Perhaps this issue has something to do with the bad blood between Faggin and Intel (just my little theory). If someone cares to investigate this even further, please do so. Slark 17:04, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
- I removed the adware/spyware claim pending some actual information. Mirror Vax 17:51, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Jokes
The 4004 marked the 4004BC of modern computing.
- I don't get it!? Pluke 21:47, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Large image
I removed Image:Intel-4004-schematics.png from the article because it was 1.5MB, which is far too large to appear in an article. Could someone who knows how to do images please replace it with a small thumbnail. 58.179.129.241 00:48, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] The 4004 was a commercial failure?
In the second paragraph of the Intel 4004 article (as of 12/7/2006 at 10AM EST), it is written:
As for the 4004 itself, it was largely a commercial failure and had very little impact on the electronics industry as a whole.
Based on my extensive research on 4004 history, I find this statement quite surprising, and would be interested in seeing evidence to support this claim. Intel's very next microprocessor, the 8008 was indeed a commercial failure. But in the case of the MCS-4 family (4001, 4002, 4003, 4004), you have to consider that commercial failures rarely spawn a family of compatible follow-on products like the 4040 microprocessor, or two generations of interface chips, like the 4008, 4009, and the later 4289 memory interface chips. Nor does one find IC date codes on chips that are commercial failures that extend 15 years from the first date of manufacture (in this case 1971-1986). National Semiconductor second-sourced the 4004 as the INS4004. I don't have hard production numbers, but my understanding is that over a million Intel 4004s were made.
It is well recognized by now that other companies were working on microprocessor technology at the same time, and that the notion of the microprocessor was "in the air." Intel's 4004 team didn't "pull an Einstein," they just got to market first with a microprocessor you could buy off-the-shelf and program yourself. William Asprey's journal article The Intel 4004 Microprocessor: What Constituted Invention?, published in the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 19, No. 3 (1997) gives a great overview of the historical context and considers whether the birth of the microprocessor was a revolutionary or evolutionary milestone in the history of technology.
Sure, let's give credit where credit is due. Let's list any and all the other companies and projects that were working on microprocessor technology around the same time. A stable Wiki that we can all agree on is the best thing we can offer the world.
Disclosure: I am not now, nor was I ever an employee of Intel. Though I have done exhibit design for the Intel Museum as an independent vendor, I am committed to as accurate a portrayal of history as possible. --Tim McNerney
