History Of Microprocessors

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 ...

Texas Instruments TMS1000 A microprocessor is a computer processor that incorporates the functions of a central processing unit on a single integrated circuit (IC), or sometimes up to 8 integrated circuits. The microprocessor is a multipurpose, clock-driven, register-based, digital integrated circuit that accepts binary data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and provides results (also in binary form) as output. Microprocessors contain both combinational logic and sequential digital logic. Microprocessors operate on numbers and symbols represented in the binary number system. Motorola 6800 The integration of a whole CPU onto a single or a few integrated circuits greatly reduced the cost of processing power. Integrated circuit processors are produced in large numbers by highly automated metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) fabrication processes, resulting in a low unit price. Single-chip processors increase reliability because there are ma...