AARON JOSH A.
ALVAREZ BSEE-3
“The Evolution of Microprocessors”
1960s: Foundations
of Microprocessors
1965
Gordon Moore predicts the doubling
of transistors on integrated circuits
1968
approximately every two years, known
Intel is founded by Robert Noyce and as Moore's Law.
Gordon Moore, paving the way for 1970s: Birth of
microprocessor development. Microprocessors
1971
Intel 4004: The first commercially 1972
available microprocessor, designed by
Federico Faggin, Marcian Hoff, and Intel 8008: An 8-bit microprocessor
Stan Mazor. It was a 4-bit processor introduced as a successor to the
with 2,300 transistors and operated 4004, doubling its processing
at 740 kHz. capabilities. The 8008 had an address
space of 16KB and was clocked at
500KHz up to 800KHz
1974
The 8080 was a significant step up, 1975
boasting a clock speed of 2MHz and
MOS 6502: MOS Technology
able to address 64KB memory. Early
introduced the 6502 as a rival chip to
desktop computers used this chip
the 8080. It powered such notable
and the CP/M operating system like
systems as the Apple II, Commodore
the Altair 8800.
PET and BBC Micro
1976
Zilog Z80 was founded by ex-Intel
engineers who created a compatible 1978
but superior chip to the 8080. The
Z80 powered many CP/M machines, Intel 8086: Famous as the first x86
plus home computers like the ZX chip, the 8086 was also Intel’s first 16-
Spectrum bit chip with about 29,000 transistors
and was clocked initially at 4.77MHz
1979
Intel 8088 A less costly version of the
8086, the 8088 used an 8-bit data
1979
bus and was the chip used in the IBM Motorola 68000 Intended to leapfrog
PC, forerunner of today’s PC industry rival processors, a 16-bit design but
with 32-bit expansion in mind. It
powered early Apple Macs and the
first Sun Unix workstations
1980s: Expansion
and Innovation
1982
Intel 80286 The 80286 was a high-
performance upgrade of the 8086, and
1985
used by IBM in the PC-AT. First clocked
Intel 80386 Intel’s first 32-bit chip, the at 6MHz, later versions ran up to 25MHz.
386 had 275,000 transistors – over The 286 had a 16MB address space and
100 times that of the 4004. Versions 134,000 transistors
of the 386 eventually reached
40MHz 1985
Acorn ARM produced as co-processor
for BBC Micro Seeking a new chip to
1987 power future business computers, the
makers of the BBC Micro decided to
Sun SPARC Like Acorn, Sun was build their own, calling it the Acorn RISC
looking for a new chip and decided to Machine (ARM)
create its own. The Sparc
architecture is still used today in Sun
(now Oracle) systems, and 1985
supercomputers Acorn ARM produced as co-processor
for BBC Micro Seeking a new chip to
power future business computers, the
1989 makers of the BBC Micro decided to
build their own, calling it the Acorn RISC
Intel 80486 A higher performance Machine (ARM)
version of the 386, Intel’s 486 was
the first x86 chip with over 1 million
transistors (1.2 million). It was also the 1990s: Performance
first with an on-chip cache and Boom
floating point unit
1990
1993
IBM RS/6000 introduces Power chips
IBM experimented with RISC chips in Intel Pentium The Pentium was a
the 1970s, and this bore fruit with the radical overhaul of Intel’s x86 line,
RS/6000 workstation in 1990. The introducing superscalar processing.
processor later developed into the Starting at 60MHz but eventually
Power chip used by IBM and Apple reaching 300MHz, the Pentium had
3,100,000 transistors
1995
Intel Pentium Pro Developed as a 1996
high-performance chip, the Pentium AMD K5 AMD had been manufacturing
Pro introduced out-of-order Intel chips under licence for years, but
execution and L2 cache inside the the K5 was its first in-house design,
same package. This line later intended to compete with the Pentium
morphed into the Xeon line
1996
DEC StrongARM Digital Equipment
1997
Corporation (DEC) developed this Intel Pentium II Based on the Pentium Pro,
family of ARM-based chips, which the Pentium II had 7,500,000 transistors
was used in several PDAs. and shipped in a cartridge enclosure that
StrongARM was later sold to Intel also held L2 cache. Clock speed ranged
from 233MHz up to 450MHz
1999
Intel Pentium III An updated Pentium II, 1999
the Pentium III was the first to feature
Intel’s SSE instructions and featured AMD Athlon The AMD Athlon was the
clock speeds from 400MHz up to firm’s first processor that could beat
1.4GHz Intel on performance. Starting at
500MHz, a later version was the first
2000s: Multi-Core x86 chip to hit 1GHz and had 22 million
Era transistors
2000
2001 Intel Pentium 4 Another major redesign,
the Pentium 4 introduced Intel’s
Intel Itanium Developed by Intel and Netburst architecture. It was clocked at
HP, Itanium is a 64-bit non-x86 1.4GHz initially, rising to 3.8GHz, and had
architecture developed for parallelism 42 million transistors
and aimed at enterprise servers. The
Itanium family has not been a great
2002
success
Intel XScale ARM To follow up the
StrongARM line, Intel developed the
2002 XScale ARM chips, which powered many
PDAs for years. However, Intel later sold
TI Omap ARM TI became one of the off XScale to Marvell in 2006.
largest makers of system-on-a-chip
devices for smartphones and PDAs
with the Omap family, combining an
ARM CPU with circuitry such as GSM
processors
2003
Intel Pentium-M (Centrino) The 2003
Pentium-M was designed specifically AMD Opteron While Intel laboured with
for laptops, and formed the core of Itanium, AMD introduced the first 64-bit
Intel’s first Centrino platform. It had x86 chips with the Opteron, which
77 million transistors and was clocked proved popular in workstations and
from 900MHz servers. It had over 105 million transistors
2005
Intel Pentium-D Intel introduced its
2006
first dual-core chips in 2005, starting AMD acquires ATI AMD bought up ATI,
with the Pentium Extreme Edition. announcing ambitious plans to combine
The Pentium D was the first its x86 processors with ATI’s graphics
mainstream desktop chip to follow processors
suit
2006
Intel Xeon 5300 Intel‘s first quad-core 2008
chips were the Xeon 5300 line for
workstations and servers. Actually Qualcomm SnapDragon ARM Wireless
two dual-core dies joined together, technology firm Qualcomm started
these have a total of 582 million producing highperformance smartphone
transistors chips based on the ARM architecture.
SnapDragon is clocked at 1GHz and has
200 million transistors
2010s: Focus on
Efficiency and AI
2011
Intel Core i3,i5, i7 Intel’s latest chips,
based on the Sandy Bridge 2017
architecture. The desktop processors
have up to eight cores on a single AMD Ryzen: Revitalizes AMD's presence
chip and up to 995 million transistors with strong performance in multi-
threaded applications.
AMD Fusion chips The Fusion line
combines multiple CPU cores on a 2018
single chip along with ATI GPU cores,
with the first chips having up to 1.45 Intel Core i9: Targeted at high-
billion transistors performance computing and gaming,
boasting up to 18 cores in its top-tier
ARM announces ARMv8 64-bit models.
architecture ARM unveils its
specifications for future 64-bit chips.
Although some years away, products
based on ARMv8 could have as many
as 128 cores
2020s: AI and
Specialized
Processors
2020
Apple M1: Apple transitions Macs
from Intel to its ARM-based M1 chip,
2021
showcasing industry-leading power
Intel Alder Lake: Hybrid efficiency and performance.
architecture combining high- AMD Ryzen 5000 Series: Based on
performance and high-efficiency Zen 3 architecture, achieving
cores for better scalability. dominance in gaming and multi-
AMD Ryzen 6000 Series (Mobile): threaded tasks.
Built on the 6nm process,
optimized for laptops. 2022
Apple M2: Improved performance
2023 and power efficiency over the M1
chip, targeting the MacBook Air and
Intel Raptor Lake: Incremental
MacBook Pro.
improvements in performance
AMD Ryzen 7000 Series: First
and efficiency, with up to 24
desktop processors based on the
cores for desktop CPUs.
5nm process, introducing DDR5 and
AMD Ryzen 7040 Series: Phoenix
PCIe 5.0 support.
processors combine Zen 4 cores
and RDNA 3 graphics for
powerful laptops. 2024
Intel Meteor Lake: Transition to a
chiplet-based design with
enhanced AI acceleration.
AMD Ryzen 8000 Series:
Expected to continue pushing
boundaries in power efficiency
and performance, likely featuring
3nm technology.
Apple M3: Rumored improvements
in AI capabilities and GPU
performance using TSMC’s 3nm
process.
