Talk:Intel 4004

4004-driven traffic lights

I'm a little unsure about the following passage, deleted (and slightly modified) from a previous revision of this article:

For calculator and controller use the 4004 was a very effective design. As of 2003, there are reportedly even a few traffic light control systems still in use built with these chips.

If someone cares to do research on this, feel free :-). It would certainly be an interesting anecdote. Wernher 23:35, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Corrected clock speed again

After a careful editor changed the 4004's maximum clock speed to the proper value of 740 kHz, someone changed it back to the widely quoted but completely incorrect value of 108 kHz. I've just fixed it again, and I added a stern explanatory comment explaining why 740 kHz is correct and should not be changed.

Unfortunately, the incorrect value of 108 kHz is all over the place now, including within some very reputable sources. Even Intel's own pages on the 4004 list it. But Intel's original 4004 data sheets all say that its minimum clock period is 1350 nanoseconds, which means the maximum clock speed is 740 kHz. (I have checked data sheets from 1971, 1973, and 1977; they all agree on this.) The only possible explanation for the widely-quoted value of 108 kHz is that the first page of these data sheets don't list a clock speed, but instead list a 10.8 microsecond instruction cycle. (This instruction cycle requires 8 clock cycles.) At some point a writer must have somehow misinterpreted this value as a 108 kHz clock speed.

Hopefully my comment in the page will keep this from happening again here, but correcting the whole world is going to take a while.  :-)

--Colin Douglas Howell 00:13, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing! I corrected the 4004 clock rate figure in the Hertz article as well. --Wernher 00:29, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

4004 vs. other "first µP" candidates...

I'm not a big fan of these "who was first" fights; in my view, they often obscure the real significance of the events in question. But I also don't like the current phrasing, which implies that the 4004's status as "first microprocessor" may not be fully deserved and that other similar devices already existed. This seems like an unnecessary distortion of history.

The idea of using large-scale integrated circuits to shrink computer processors had certainly occurred to many people, of course, but the Intel designers do seem to have been the first to make a one-chip processor intended to be generally applicable to a variety of problems and to introduce it to a broad market.

To make this clear, I would describe the 4004 as "the first commercial single-chip microprocessor".

--Colin Douglas Howell 01:40, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Second that. I made the (slightly more unambiguous, at the risk of being corrected...) edit, and split the F14 CADC material off into its own article (where it should be further elaborated upon, interesting as it most certainly is). --Wernher 20:52, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I disagree. The CADC was not multi-chip. The central processor itself had everything (and more) that the 4004 did, EXCEPT for a program counter. The PC on the CADC architecture was placed on the RAS (e.g. RAM) and ROM chips. This was to facilitate multi-processing. To discount the CADC because of this is debatable. I think this problem could be solved by careful use of the word "first". As a computer historian, I learned long ago never to use the word as an adjective when describing an artifact from computing history because you will eventually and invariably be proven wrong.

I think the wording I implemented is proper, and furthermore I think the CADC reference should be completely omitted as this is a page about the 4004. There should be a footnote or a link to the CADC entry. As far as the second point ("generally applicable to a variety of problems") this is true, but these caveats should be explicitly expressed in the description because they matter. I can be reached at sellam@vintagetech.com --Sellam Ismail 07:47, 11 November 2005 (PST)

After having studied the matter more thoroughly, I am now aware of the things you point out here. However, I don't fully understand your having a problem with the mention of the CADC in this article---unless you are simply of the opinion that the CADC information in the intro pgph kind of clutters up the article a bit? If so, moving most of the CADC info into a footnote would be no problem. As for further elaborations of "who was first", FWIW, please see the CADC talk page. --Wernher 06:34, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Added a reference that has interesting including multiple viewpoints of people who were there at the time. Link in the main article is to the author's homepage. Alternative link: http://home.tx.rr.com/gep2b/schaller_dissertation_2004.pdf Also compare discussion to wording on intel's 4004 site, which I am inclined to think of as 'simply not truthful', but then, they do it for the marketing. Anyway, enjoy the read. It appears to be very well researched. 85.178.88.27 02:09, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Adware/spyware warning

I moved the "adware warning" against http://www.intel4004.com/ from the ext lk description itself into an intra-section footnote: "Site has been reported to contain adware/spyware." If someone cares to investigate this further, please do so. --Wernher 22:52, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

There seems to be a web bug on the home page of http://www.intel4004.com/, namely http://www.intel4004.com/images/blank_trans.gif, this has privacy implications although whether this web bug can be classified as adware and/or spyware I am unsure. Perhaps this issue has something to do with the bad blood between Faggin and Intel (just my little theory). If someone cares to investigate this even further, please do so. Slark 17:04, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I removed the adware/spyware claim pending some actual information. Mirror Vax 17:51, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

McAfee's SiteAdvisor reports that it links to a couple of shady sites, webstats4u.com and itrack.it. --Traal 23:41, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

The problem has been solved. We got rid of the offending counter.

Jokes

The 4004 marked the 4004BC of modern computing.

I don't get it!? Pluke 21:47, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

See Ussher chronology. Ferritecore 11:18, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Large image

I removed Image:Intel-4004-schematics.png from the article because it was 1.5MB, which is far too large to appear in an article. Could someone who knows how to do images please replace it with a small thumbnail. 58.179.129.241 00:48, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

The 4004 was a commercial failure?

In the second paragraph of the Intel 4004 article (as of 12/7/2006 at 10AM EST), it is written:

As for the 4004 itself, it was largely a commercial failure and had very little impact on the electronics industry as a whole.

Based on my extensive research on 4004 history, I find this statement quite surprising, and would be interested in seeing evidence to support this claim. Intel's very next microprocessor, the 8008 was indeed a commercial failure. But in the case of the MCS-4 family (4001, 4002, 4003, 4004), you have to consider that commercial failures rarely spawn a family of compatible follow-on products like the 4040 microprocessor, or two generations of interface chips, like the 4008, 4009, and the later 4289 memory interface chips. Nor does one find IC date codes on chips that are commercial failures that extend 15 years from the first date of manufacture (in this case 1971-1986). National Semiconductor second-sourced the 4004 as the INS4004. I don't have hard production numbers, but my understanding is that over a million Intel 4004s were made.

It is well recognized by now that other companies were working on microprocessor technology at the same time, and that the notion of the microprocessor was "in the air." Intel's 4004 team didn't "pull an Einstein," they just got to market first with a microprocessor you could buy off-the-shelf and program yourself. William Asprey's journal article The Intel 4004 Microprocessor: What Constituted Invention?, published in the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 19, No. 3 (1997) gives a great overview of the historical context and considers whether the birth of the microprocessor was a revolutionary or evolutionary milestone in the history of technology.

Sure, let's give credit where credit is due. Let's list any and all the other companies and projects that were working on microprocessor technology around the same time. A stable Wiki that we can all agree on is the best thing we can offer the world.

Disclosure: I am not now, nor was I ever an employee of Intel. Though I have done exhibit design for the Intel Museum as an independent vendor, I am committed to as accurate a portrayal of history as possible. --Tim McNerney

I too would agree.

The statement that the 4004 was a commercial failure is an unfair opinion.

Busicom paid for its development (largely), and gave Intel an incrediable market opportunity. Let's not forget that Busicom, using the NCR brand, produced millions of desktop calculators using their version of the 4004.

--Robert

A curious coincidence

I added "A curious coincidence" because I thought that the story of the naming of the 4004 was interesting and also the coincidence with the date 4004 B.C. surprising. viuz 22:19, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Elvia -- Thanks for all of your contributions to this page. I teach Computing at Bennington College and we've discussed the design of the 4004 at length. We designed and built our own CPU in TTL last year, and one of the students dedicated it to Federico. But mostly, I just wanted to say that your contributions to the documentation and history of the 4004 are excellent. Joe 04:09, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry I deleted this section. One must admit this is a 'cute' little coincidence, but you should present it in a way which doesn't assume creationism. --hydrox 02:20, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I find this "curious coincidence" interesting because a break from an established part numbering system suggests that the chooser-of-numbers thought that this family of chips was a significant break from the established product line. A little documentation and a more encyclopedic presentation and I think the break in numbering conventions fits in as more than just a coincidence. It speaks to the significance of this chip offering, and that the significance was realized at the time. Any speculation as to why the specific number 4004 was chosen remains just speculation absent some supporting evidence. The relationship between the part number of this chip and the Usher chronology is likely just coincidence. It is just as likely that somebody thought a palindrome looked nice. Ferritecore 03:37, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I think with some rewording the section should go back in. As it was, it's not a hard stretch to read it without assuming creationism, so the text is nearly fine. Or perhaps it can be prefaced or couched in text that alerts the reader to the more informal nature of the paragraph. Joe 19:50, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree, and done right it could possibly fit in the history section. Ferritecore 21:50, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

4004 vs. ENIAC

I removed the following:

The Intel 4004 CPU had 17 times the computing power of the 1946 ENIAC vacuum tube supercomputer, which weighed 33 tons and occupied 212 square metres of floor space.

This seems to be comparing add time (10.8us on 4004 vs. 200us on ENIAC, although that is closer to 18.5). This is an unfair comparison as the 4004 is adding only 1 digit in this time and ENIAC is adding 10 digits (single precision) or 20 digits (double precision). Also ENIAC was parallel in 1946 and could be doing additions in up to 20 accumulators at the same time.

By my calculations they are from roughly comparable to ENIAC being somewhere over 10 times faster; although this would require actual 4004 code for 10 digit addition to be certain which probably required several instructions per digit, not just one.

I don't believe any fair comparison of the two machines could be done in one single number like this. -- RTC 00:13, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I found the text was originally inserted as the following:

The Intel 4004 CPU had the computing power of the 1946 ENIAC vacuum tube supercomputer, which weighed 30 tons and occupied 167 square metres of floor space.

While this is more realistic, I still don't believe a single number can accurately and fairly compare the two machines. -- RTC 00:27, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Single--chip microprocessor?

There's the statement in the article that the 4004 was not a "single chip microprocessor", as "contrary to popular belief". I find this somewhat confusing; admittedly, the 4004 was not a "stand-alone" chip, of the later sort that included RAM, ROM, and/or IO multiplexing, but did anyone ever think it was? As I recall the times, the chip was the first to be a microprocessor on a single chip - the fact that the RAM or ROM was separate isn't relevant, really. Ofc, even the very newest Pentiums still don't contain memory. Anyways, I think this needs clarification, but I wasn't sure how to fix it. Is there a distinct category called "single-chip micro" which specifically refers to having all major functions onboard a single chip? I'm not familiar with the semantics here, but clearly the 4004 was the first processor on a single chip. Eaglizard 21:51, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

This goes to the heart of the discussion as to whether the Central Air Data Computer was a microprocessor and did it beat the 4004 by 1 year. Alatari (talk) 06:08, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Pioneer 10

I recently viewed a video by the Computer History Museum in which Ted Hoff and Federico Faggin talked about the 4004, and at one point Federico says, "... the most remarkable application, of which I feel very ... proud, is the 4004 is one of the few artifacts that have gone beyond the asteroid belts in Pioneer 10 ... It's a major piece of artwork up in space". This wiki article states that it's just a myth, however. Was Federico kidding around? -- MP64 (talk) 07:20, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I have found a reference to the possibility of the 4004 on Pioneer 10: http://www.opencores.org/forums/cores/2002/05/00059 According to Dr. Larry Lasher of AMES Research Center that the 4004 was not used on the Pioneer 10 spacecraft. http://home.comcast.net/~jsweinrich Jweinrich (talk) 15:26, 2 August 2008 (UTC)