A Very Short History of Computing,

Microprocessors and Microcontrollers

A selection of slides on just a few key events in early computing history

Sandra I. Woolley
Electronic, Electrical and Computer Engineering
The World’s First Computer Colossus
o Colossus was built at Bletchley
Park during WWII.
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/
o Bletchley Park was a major
code-breaking site. Alan Turing
and others worked on cracking
the German Engima machine
codes.

o Colossus was built to decipher

the Enigma codes.

o Bletchley Park is open today as

a museum. It includes a Top the Colossus computer,
computer museum and a Bottom left Bletchley Park and
Bottom right an Enigma machine.
working replica of Colossus. http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/
 Computing at Manchester after WWII
Mark I
o The University of Manchester made
a considerable contribution to the
development of computing. They
produced the first stored program
computer, the first floating point
machine, the first transistor
computer and the first computer to
use virtual memory.

Right Images of Mark 1 the computer built at Manchester

University after WWII
Above Kilburn and Williams at the Manchester Mark 1 Console
http://www.computer50.org/kgill/index.html
Electrical Engineering
Manchester University 1950

Professor F.C. Williams Tommy Kilburn

The First Computer Program
The First Department of Computer Science

 Tommy Kilburn went on to set up a new

Department of Computer Science at
Manchester, with 12 staff.

 The new department was housed in a

different building.

 The preparation of a new syllabus was

of course a major undertaking.
1948 Professor Tommy Kilburn 1998
http://www.computer50.org/kgill/index.html
 In October 1965 the first intake of 30
first year students arrived.
ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer)

U.S. Army Computer @ University of Pennsylvania

o ENIAC contained
approximately 18,000
vacuum tubes, 70,000
resistors, 10,000
capacitors, and 6,000
switches.

o It was 100 feet long, 10 feet

high, and 3 deep. It
consumed 140 kilowatts of
power.
 
ENIAC-on-a-Chip
Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania
http://www.ee.upenn.edu/~jan/eniacproj.html
 
 
 

Size: 7.44mm x 5.29mm; 174,569 transistors; 0.5 um CMOS technology (triple metal layer).
The Transistor
 John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and
William Shockley discovered the
transistor effect and developed the
first device in December 1947, while
the three were members of the
technical staff at Bell Laboratories in
Murray Hill, NJ. They were awarded
the Nobel Prize in physics in 1956.

 Developed as a replacement for

bulky and inefficient vacuum tubes
and mechanical relays, the
transistor later revolutionized the
entire electronics world.
Intel
 1950's: Shockley leaves Bell Labs to establish Shockley Labs in California. Some of
the best young electronic engineers and solid-state physicists come to work with him.
These include Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore.

 1969: Intel was a tiny start-up company in Santa Clara, headed by Noyce and Moore.

 1970: Busicom placed an order with Intel for custom calculator chips. Intel had no
experience of custom-chip design and sets outs to design a general-purpose
solution.

 1971: Intel have problems translating architectures into working chip designs - the
project runs late.

 Faggin joins Intel and solves the problems in weeks.

 The result is the Intel 4000 family (later renamed MCS-4, Microcomputer System 4-
bit), comprising the 4001 (2k ROM), the 4002 (320-bit RAM), the 4003 (10-bit I/O shift-
register) and the 4004, a 4-bit CPU.
Intel 4004
 Introduced in 1971, the Intel 4004
"Computer-on-a-Chip" was a
2300 transistor device capable of performing
60,000 operations per
second.

 It was the first-ever single-chip

microprocessor and had approximately
the same performance as the 18,000
vacuum tube ENIAC. The 4-bit
Intel C4004 ran at a Clock Speed of 108
KiloHertz.
The Intel 4004
Federico
Faggin
designed the
Intel 4004
processor. His
initials were
printed on the
circuit.
The Busicom Calculator

 The Busicom calculator used

five Intel 4001’s, two 4002’s,
three 4003’s and the 4004 CPU

The original engineering prototype

of the Busicom desk-top printing
calculator, the world’s first
commercial product to use a
microprocessor.
http://www.computerhistory.org/exhibits/highlights/busicom.shtml
Intel 8008
 1972: Faggin begins work on an 8-bit processor, the Intel 8008. The
prototype has serious problems with electrical charge leaking out of its
memory circuits. Device physics, circuit design and layout are
important new skills. The 8008 chip layout is completely redesigned
and the chip is released.

 There is a sudden surge in microprocessor interest.

 Intel's 8008 is well-received, but system designers want increased

speed, easier interfacing, and more I/O and instructions. The improved
version, produced by Faggin, is the 8080.

 Faggin leaves Intel to start his own company Zilog, who later produce
the Z80.
Federico Faggin : Zilog
 Zilog produced the 3.5MHz Zilog
Z80 (a very popular processor
taught in many universities)

 … and, later, a 16-bit Z8000.

Another great design but Zilog
struggled to provide good
support, they were a new and
inexperienced company and had
only a few hundred employees;
at this time Intel had over 10
thousand.
The Zilog Z80
 The Z80 microprocessor is an 8 bit CPU with a 16
bit address bus capable of direct access of 64k of
memory space.

 It was based on the 8080; it has a large instruction

set.

 Programming features include an accumulator and

six eight bit registers that can be paired as 3-16 bit
registers. In addition to the general registers, a
stack-pointer, program-counter, and two index
(memory pointers) registers are provided.

 It had a 40 pin DIP package manufactured in A, B,

and C models, differing only in maximum clock
speed. It was also manufactured as a stand-alone
microcontroller with various configurations of on-chip
RAM and EPROM.

 It proves useful for low cost control applications.

Early Microcontrollers
 1974: Motorola (originally car radio manufacturers) had introduced
transistors in the 1950s and decided to make a late but serious effort in the
microprocessor market. They announced their 8-bit 6800 processor.
Though bulky, and fraught with production problems, their 6800 had a good
design.

 1975: General Motors approach Motorola about a custom-built derivative of

the 6800. Motorola's long experience with automobile manufacturers pays
off and Ford follow GM's lead.

 1976: Intel introduce an 8-bit microcontroller, the MCS-48. They ship

251,000 in this year.

 1980: Intel introduce the 8051, an 8-bit microcontroller with on-board

EPROM memory. They ship 22 million and 91 million in 1983.
Early Computer Games
 1972: The video game industry gets underway as Nolan
Bushnell starts his own company, Syzygy, later renamed
ATARI.

 Bushnell had studied the first 8-bit microprocessors and

uses them to duplicate an arcade version of the computer
games he had used on his University's computers.

 His first attempt at a video game, Computer Space, is 'too

complicated' and fails. In his next attempt he decides to
"build a game so mindless and self-evident that a monkey
or its equivalent (a drunk in a bar) could instantly
understand it".

 Depressingly, PONG, the electronic equivalent of Ping- Computer Space – the first arcade video game
Pong, was a great success.
Early Computers
 1975: An advert in Popular Electronics
describes an $800 ready-to-build
computer kit based on the Intel 8080. At
this time the smallest commercial
computers are selling for $30,000.

 Steve Wozniak builds a computer in his

garage with a $20 8-bit processor from
MOS Tech. Inc. (absorbed by
Commodore in 1977). This was the
prototype for the Apple 1.

 1978: Intel announces the 16 bit, 16-bit

bus 8086, based on the 8080; it has 10
times the performance.
 The Intel 8086

 29,000 Transistors

 Clock Speeds: 5, 8 and 10 MHz

 Introduced: June 8,1978

 Approx. 10 times the performance of

the 8080
Early Computers
 1979: Motorola also announce a 16-bit 68000.
Indisputably, the best microprocessor on the
market. It would be used in the Apple Macintosh
launched in 1984.

 Intel look seriously at the competition (Motorola

and Zilog) and implement 'Operation CRUSH' - a
huge campaign with a focused and trained work
force providing customer support, complete
solutions and long-term product support.

 CRUSH proves an excellent strategy and the

8086 becomes the de facto standard. This
success helps finance additions to their product
range, one of which is the bus width reduced
8088, a 16-bit (8-bit bus) microprocessor. The early Apple Macintosh
 The IBM PC
 1981: IBM, having seen Apple's success recognise a new personal computer market.
They choose Intel over Motorola and Zilog (and their own proprietary processors)
because of Intel's long-term commitment to the 8086 line.

 IBM selects the Intel 8088 for their PC, introduced in August.

 Intel bring out the 16-bit 80286 for the IBM PC AT but it has weaknesses, most
notably in virtual memory support. The newest 'killer' application software, Microsoft
Windows, needs a more powerful processor.

 IBM’s service to the computer industry was to make the PC 'open', this meant clone
makers could compete with IBM-compatible PCs. New companies such as Compaq
and Dell (both from Texas) fare well, as do South Korea's Leading Edge and Taiwan's
Acer who produce PCs with AT performance at half the price.

 1985: Intel announce the 80386 a 32-bit microprocessor, of 275,000 transistors. It

was the world's best performing processor at this time.

 1986 Compaq are the first company to bring out a 386 PC. IBM's 386 PC, the PS/2,
does not come out for another year.
Moore’s Law

 Dr. Gordon E. Moore co-

founded Intel in 1968.

 His observation that number

of transistors doubled every
2 years became known as
“Moore’s Law”
Transistors per Processor
Year of
Transistors
introduction
4004 1971 2,250
8008 1972 2,500
8080 1974 5,000
8086 1978 29,000
286 1982 120,000
386™ processor 1985 275,000
486™ DX processor 1989 1,180,000
Pentium® processor 1993 3,100,000
Pentium II processor 1997 7,500,000
Pentium III processor 1999 24,000,000
Pentium 4 processor 2000 42,000,000

Moore's original paper http://www.intel.com/research/silicon/moorespaper.pdf

 More at ...
Microprocessor history
http://www.eee.bham.ac.uk/woolleysi/teaching/microhistory.htm

and further reading:

The Microprocessor - A Biography, Mike MALONE, Springer-Verlag 1995, 0-
387-94342-0

Sandra Woolley
Electronic, Electrical and Computer Engineering
A Quick Quiz
Some questions for you to try

1. What was the name of the world’s first computer and what was it designed to do?

2. What was the microprocessor used in the first IBM PC?

3. How did it differ from the 8008?

4. Why did Intel succeed in the PC market when the competition was better?

5. Why did car manufacturer’s prefer Motorola?

6. What were the names of the 8-bit and 16-bit Motorola and Zilog processors? (4 names required)

7. Who started ATARI and what was the name of the first successful game?

8. Who beat IBM with the 1st 386 PC on the market?