Intel 4004 – 1971

scientists had discussed the possibility of a computer on a chip, but nearly everyone felt
that integrated circuit technology was not yet ready to support such a chip. Intel's Ted
Hoff felt differently; he was the first person to recognize that the new silicon-gated MOS
technology might make a single-chip CPU (central processing unit) possible.
Hoff and the Intel team developed such architecture with just over 2,300 transistors in
an area of only 3 by 4 millimeters. With its 4-bit CPU, command register, decoder,
decoding control, control monitoring of machine commands and interim register, the
4004 was one heck of a little invention. Today's 64-bit microprocessors are still based on
similar designs, and the microprocessor is still the most complex mass-produced product
ever with more than 5.5 million transistors performing hundreds of millions of
calculations each second - numbers that are sure to be outdated fast.