History

The advent of low-cost computers on integrated circuits has transformed modern society. General-purpose microprocessors in personal computers are used for computation, text editing, multimedia display, and communication over the Internet. Many more microprocessors are part of embedded systems, providing digital control over myriad objects from appliances to automobiles to cellular phones and industrial process control.

The microprocessor has origins in the development of the MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor, or MOS transistor), which was first demonstrated by Mohamed M. Atalla and Dawon Kahng of Bell Labs in 1960. Following the development of MOS integrated circuit chips in the early 1960s, MOS chips reached higher transistor density and lower manufacturing costs than bipolar integrated circuits by 1964. MOS chips further increased in complexity at a rate predicted by Moore's law, leading to large-scale integration (LSI) with hundreds of transistors on a single MOS chip by the late 1960s. The application of MOS LSI chips to computing was the basis for the first microprocessors, as engineers began recognizing that a complete computer processor could be contained on several MOS LSI chips. 

The PICO1/GI250 chip introduced in 1971: It was designed by Pico Electronics (Glenrothes, Scotland) and manufactured by General Instrument of Hicksville NY.

Fair child semiconductors (founded in 1957) invented the first Integrated Circuit in 1959 that marked the microprocessor history. In 1968, Gordan Moore, Robert Noyce and Andrew Grove resigned from the Fair child semiconductors and started their own company: Integrated Electronics (Intel). In 1971, the first microprocessor Intel 4004 was invented. A microprocessor is also known as a central processing unit in which numbers of peripherals’ are fabricated on a single chip. It has ALU (arithmetic and logic unit), a control unit, registers, bus systems and a clock to perform computational tasks.

We will take a look at the five generations of microprocessors that have been developed ever since the first microprocessor came into being.