50th Anniversary of the World's First Microprocessor Intel 4004

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Intel celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Intel 4004, the world's first commercially available microprocessor.

Launched in 1971, the 4004 paved the way for modern microprocessor computing—the brains that create nearly every modern technology, from the cloud to the edge. The Intel 4004 microprocessor laid the foundation for computing and touched every life on the planet.

Intel Corporation Historian Elizabeth Jones:

“You won't always have a calculator in your pocket, calculate it yourself.”

If you were born in the first three quarters of the 20th century, when a pocket-sized digital calculator was the sci-fi element, you've probably heard the phrase above many times. But in 2021, we rarely hear this even in the classroom. Most of us now carry a calculator in our pocket. At the same time, phone, camera, MP4 player, live mapping system… I can't finish counting what we have in our pockets.

Most of us have taken for granted that these tools are always with us, everywhere. But we wouldn't have any of this without the Intel® 4004, the first commercially available microprocessor, and the technological evolution it sparked over the next half century.

Today, microprocessors protect the power grid in extreme weather conditions, helping to prevent outages and live our lives as we are used to. It is these microprocessors that run artificial intelligence to help visually impaired people navigate the world, avoid obstacles, and cross pedestrian crossings safely from the inside of a backpack. And by translating facial expressions into real-time wheelchair commands, they also provide individual autonomy regardless of the individual's physical limitations.

It all started with a calculator. In 1969, Japanese manufacturer Nippon Calculating Machine Corp. turned to Intel to design the integrated circuit array for the engineering calculator prototype Busicom 141-PF. Original plans required 12 custom chips, but Intel staffers Marcian “Ted” Hoff, Stan Mazor, and Federico Faggina adapted this design to a four-chipset, including the 4004 central processing unit (CPU), which was officially introduced in November 1971.

Prior to the fingernail-sized 4004 microprocessor, the only way to achieve equivalent processing power was to use computers that took up the whole room, which was not only impractical, but also not an efficient use of space.

“It's the story of things getting smaller,” says Intel Senior Researcher Genevieve Bell.

4004 was the beginning of this road; a slow start. As soon as Intel engineers showed how the central processing unit could be used, the developers began to build on this great legacy. Thus, while the chip sizes were getting smaller, the computing power increased exponentially. Mazor, one of the inventors, describes the process as follows: “The 4004 revolutionized so much that it took about five years for Intel to train developers to develop new products based on microprocessors. In the end, Intel was very successful in these efforts, and the rest is history.”

"Very successful"; this great breakthrough could only be so underestimated.

By 2021, the microprocessor has permeated nearly every aspect of people's daily lives around the world; laptops, smartphones, gaming PCs, connected smart devices… The microprocessor technology sparked by the Intel 4004 allows us to stay connected with friends, family and colleagues, bypass geographic barriers and make a big difference in our spare time during the pandemic.

And it went beyond that. Consider, for example, the COVID-19 pandemic.

Intel worked with the Scientific and Industrial Research Council of India and the International Institute of Information Technology in Hyderabad to design faster and more cost-effective coronavirus tests. The technology has also helped decipher the sequencing of the coronavirus genome to aid understanding of the epidemiology. Intel has also collaborated with the National Association of Software and Service Companies of India to create an app ecosystem and multicloud backend to enable population-scale COVID-19 diagnostics. This collaboration has helped scientists predict the occurrence of epidemics and improve medical care management and administration.

So to what do we owe all this? You know: We owe it all to microprocessor technology, which flexes as different needs arise.

“It wasn't always clear where the progress was going to go,” Faggin adds. But now we know.

The 4004 ushers in the modern computing era through the design and manufacture of the first commercially available CPU for a desktop calculator, while the latest 12th Gen Intel® CoreTM and 3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors are available for entertainment, business, AI, cloud IT provides architectures that enable 5G communications and edge capabilities. They optimize the process and come across as silicon that can run applications from your desktop, laptop, cloud, edge or pocket.

Thanks to the Intel 4004, we carry much more than a calculator in our pocket today.

Intel Corporation Historian Elizabeth Jones.