Reality → Tech → Chips → Processors
| PC processors | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| year | chip | transistors | nm |
| 1974 | 8080 | 5,000 | 10,000 |
| 1978 | 8086 | 29,000 | 3,000 |
| 1985 | 80386 | 275,000 | 1,000 |
| 1993 | Pentium | 3,100,000 | 600 |
| 2006 | Core Duo | 410,000,000 | 65 |
| 2012 | Ivy Bridge | 1,400,000,000 | 22 |
| 2016 | Broadwell | 3,400,000,000 | 14 |
| 2020 | Apple A14 | 11,800,000,000 | 5 |
Intel, originally a memory chip maker, became the largest producer of microprocessors (CPUs) for computers [1] . The company's historic line of renowned processors exemplifies the semiconductor industry's advancement from micro to nano scale chip manufacture that drove exponential growth of computer performance and reduction of costs in line with 'Moore’s law' [2] . The first truly commercial mass-produced microprocessor, the 8-bit 8080 chip, was released in 1974 [3] . Four years later, that processor had evolved into the 16-bit 8086, the chip that was used in the IBM PC and set a standard for all following PC processors [4] . In 1985, the first 32-bit processor, popularly known as 386, was released [5] . In 1993, the Pentium-line hit the market with parallel processing [6] . In 2006, the 64-bit Intel Core Duo, the first processor with more than one CPU on a single chip, was introduced [7] . In 2012, the transistor count of a PC processor chip exceeded 1 billion [8] . Continued miniaturization is driven by relentless evolution of mobile devices [9] . As manufacturing approaches the atomic scale, new technologies will eventually be needed [10] .
Starting at the close of the 1960s as a small maker of RAM memory chips, Intel soon became a world leader in developing and marketing CPUs for computers and servers. In recent years, its share in that market amounted to about 80%, with its competitor AMD accounting for the remainder. Intel also focusses on powering big data and cloud computing with its line of chips (including FPGAs), but withdrew from the highly competitive market for mobile devices. In the overall market for semiconductors (including all types of CPUs, controllers, memory and other chips), Intel and Samsung are leading, with each company having a share of about 15%.
During 50 years of processor development, Moore's 'law' proved mostly correct in predicting a doubling of computer performance every two years. The size of the smallest features on a chip shrank from 10 micrometers in the early 1970s to 14 nanometers in 2014 and to 10 or 7 nanometers in 2018. The number of floating point operations per second (FLOPS, proportional to transistor count and clock rate) increased from kilo to GigaFLOPS (even to TeraFLOPS for some server and supercomputer processors). Pictures of historic Intel processors demonstrate the increasing complexity.
The 8080 chip (10 μm technology, 5,000 transistors, 1 MHz clock rate) was part of the popular Altair-kit of the mid-1970s. Four years earlier, Intel had developed the first microprocessor, the 4-bit 4004 chip (2,300 transistors, 740 kHz clock rate), but failed to gain market penetration due to failure of the Japanese partner Busicom.
The 8086 chip (3 μm technology, 29,000 transistors, 5 MHz clock rate) became the prototype of all x86 processors (incl. present-day 64-bit multi-core processors), which are backwards compatible through their common architecture characterized mainly by special-purpose registers for complicated instructions, a design feature that can be traced back even to the 8080 chip.
The 386 chip (1 μm technology, 275,000 transistors, 33 MHz clock rate) brought a significant performance increase over the preceding 286 chip which powered IBM's second generation (AT) PC. IBM PC-compatible clones powered with the 386 chip (Compaq was first to use it) gained market dominance in the second half of the 1980s. The successor chip 486 brought further improvements and market domination of PC compatibles.
The Pentium chip (originally 600 nm technology, 3 million transistors, 75 MHz clock rate) was the first superscalar x86-based chip, introducing parallel processing for PCs. Production of the Pentium as a single core chip stopped in 2008, but Pentium-type CPUs continue to be used in todays multi-core processors.
The Core Duo chip (65 nm technology, 400 million transistors, 2 GHz clock rate) was the first multi-core processor, a lower-power and lower-GHz alternative for high computing performance, ending the race for ever higher clock rates (late Pentium chips typically ran at 3 GHz, extreme versions at up to 10 GHz with high power consumption and cooling needs).
The 4-core Ivy Bridge processor launched in 2012 had 1.4 billion transistors (this chip introduced the 3D tri-gate transistor, continued in Haswell, Broadwell, and other successor chips; Turbo Boost and hyper-threading are additional features). In mid-2016, the record transistor count was 7.2 billion, implemented on a 22-core single-chip processor (more technical specifications of present-day chips are shown in Intel ARK).
Based on ARM architecture, key components of the Apple-designed processors (SoCs and SiCs) for mobile devices were initially manufactured by Samsung. In 2014, starting with the A8 processor, manufacturing was transferred to TSMC. The latest processor (A14) incorporates 11.8 billion transistors, produced with TSMC's '5 nm' technology.
Moore's 'law' and the ITRS (International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors) have been instrumental in the development of ever smaller chip components, pushed by Intel's now defunct 'Tick-Tock' strategy. Further die shrinks beyond the envisaged 5 nm technology, may require complety new technologies (see Chip manufacturing).