History and description

History and description
Intel D4004
National Semiconductor INS4004.

The 4004 was released on November 15, 1971. Packaged in a 16-pin ceramic dual in-line package, the 4004 is the first computer processor designed and manufactured by chip maker Intel, which previously made semiconductor memory chips. The chief designers of the chip were Federico Faggin (project leader and chip designer - developed the new random logic methodology with silicon gate and several technological and circuit innovations that made it possible to fit the microprocessor in one chip in 1970-1971) and Ted Hoff (formulated the architectural proposal in 1969) of Intel, and Masatoshi Shima of Busicom (later of ZiLOG, founded by Federico Faggin at the end of 1974, the first company entirely devoted to microprocessors). Shima designed the Busicom calculator firmware and assisted Faggin during the first six months of the implementation. The manager of Intel's MOS Design Department was Leslie L. Vadász.[1] At the time of the MCS-4 development Vadasz's attention was completely focused on the mainstream business of semiconductor memories and he left the leadership and the management of the MCS-4 project to Faggin.

Originally designed for the Japanese company Busicom to be used in their line of calculators (instead of the complex special purpose calculator chipset that Busicom had designed themselves and brought to Intel to have made, which Intel determined was too complex to make with the technology they had at the time), the 4004 was also provided with a family of custom support chips. For instance, each "Program ROM" internally latched for its own use the 4004's 12-bit program address, which allowed 4 KB memory access from the 4-bit address bus if all 16 ROMs were installed. The 4004 circuit was built of 2,300 transistors, and was followed the next year by the first ever 8-bit microprocessor, the 3,300 transistor 8008 (and the 4040, a revised 4004).

As its fourth entry in the microprocessor market, Intel released the CPU that started the microcomputer revolution — the 8080. A popular myth has it that Pioneer 10, the first spacecraft to leave the solar system, used an Intel 4004 microprocessor. However, according to Dr. Larry Lasher of Ames Research Center, the Pioneer team did evaluate the 4004, but "it was too new at the time to include in any of the Pioneer projects." The myth was repeated by Federico Faggin himself in a lecture for the Computer History Museum in 2006.

On 15 November 2006, the 35th anniversary of the Intel 4004, Intel celebrated by releasing the chip's schematics, mask works, and user manual.