3 Minutes On... The Intel 4004 Microprocessor

The Intel 4004 is a 4-bit microprocessor considered to be the first commercially available microprocessor.

#3MinutesOn #intel #intel4004 #computers #retrocomputing

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[bill]

When the 4004 came out, I was 6yo. My first microcontroller was the 8749H NMOS single chip computer. The 80286 had just come out. To use 8749H, I first had to build my own serial programmer and write the PC interface in QBasic. All self-taught from Intel data books. I also built my own UV erasure box. I etched and drilled PCBs by hand. I took my projects to my job interviews and thus got hired into automotive electronics engineering. I've been programming microcontrollers for a living for the past 31 years. The first 10 years all in assembler. Talk about grudge work. High-level language compilers and IDEs have come a long way. I enjoy programming and making my PCBs do stuff.

[momijithelesbianleftie]

Fun fact the voice over is done by the intel 4004 microprocessor itself

[kelleybryant]

This music is absolutely appropriate to the era the chip is from. Your voice work is also reminiscent of that era. I thought this was an archival video at first. I like it the way it is!

[ntyham]

I started working with the 4004 when it was released. I still have a bunch of them. On the 8008 came out, I built the Mark 8 Minicomputer from Radio Electronics magazine. It was a fun thing to play with

[afriendofafriend]

Man "modern" really goes out of style quickly when it comes to computing.

[cmonkey]

I used to teach a course in university about single board computer design using 8-bit microprocessors back in the 1980s. Didn't realise that there was a 4-bit predecessor, so thanks.

[MinutesOn]

Yes, I know the music is annoying. And I agree. I get an email about it several times a week. Subsequent videos have addressed this, and it's been forefront in my mind in every video I've produced in the last ~6 years since someone first mentioned it. 😏 I can't replace the video without wrecking the stats, so sadly, it remains. A warning for future me. A bass-thumping scarecrow...

[johneygd]

It’s mind blowing that such primitive processor like the 4004 chip did had as much power as a whole room filled Iniac computersystem, that’s like shrinking down a whole room into a size not bigger then a small biscuit.

[hdgboy]

Jeez you all. Every video can’t have a hip hop rhythm to the music soundtrack. This soundtrack is appropriate and complimentary to the subject matter. Open your mind and god forbid broaden your horizons.

[Hopeless_and_Forlorn]

The original model of the Boeing 737-200 was introduced into service in 1969 with lots of systems logic effected by discrete components, but not a single digital component on board. In the mid-1970s, a digital replacement for the aircraft's original CADC arrived. As I remember, it transmitted altitude information to the captain's altimeter via an ARINC 429 digital bus. Since that time, many hundreds of pounds of wiring, at least, have been replaced by digital buses in each airplane even as the airplane's systems have grown tremendously in functionality, flexibility, and reliability. And then there is fly-by-wire.

[steveskouson]

In 1970, I was in sixth grade, and my father
was employee #47 at a small memory
manufacturer, in Mt View Ca. Yes, Intel

Intel had their actual logo on the silicon
wafer. Dad would bring bad wafers home,
and I took a few to school, so the other kids
could see the intel logo, on a microscope.

One Saturday, dad had to go in to work, and
he dragged me along. I got to meet Gordon
Moore that day. Called my father by his
nickname. (Dad's initials were GWS, which
he edited to Gus. Gus Skouson.)

steve

[steelplasma]

$60 in 1971 so today that would be $375 about the same price as a high-end intel cpu. Feels like some kind of irony.

[connecticutaggie]

In college I worked on a project that first used a 4004. It was pretty minimal. We were excited when we got the 8008.

[ColinDyckes]

8008 was the first chip I used, but really got started with the Z80🙂

[Ailsworth]

The thing inside the F-14 cannot be counted for two reasons. First, what he developed was not a microprocessor chip but a micro processing set of chips. Second, Holt stands completely outside the stream of influence in computer science.

[scottduede]

This is fantastic! Way back in the Ancient Era of the Nineteen Nineties, I took a class in Jr. High as an intro to computers, and we were reading the same kind of stuff in a text book; a Paper textbook, if you can believe in such a thing!
This is a really excellent 3-minute piece, and I'll be showing it to my kids this afternoon.

[lukej]

I actually thought the music sounded really retrofuturistic, definitely suits the subject imo :)

[vmsysprog]

@3Minutes On: Seriously, the background music is to loud, it makes it hard to hear the narrator.

[neodonkey]

The 4004 is rather lovely to study and play with, you can read the datasheet and write code for it in raw hex in a matter of hours. What most people don't understand about the 4004 is it is less a general purpose CPU and more a "multichip microcontroller".

The 8048 microcontrollers and beyond are spiritual successors to the 4004 I understand.

The 8080, then 8086 that all our PCs hark from have their roots in the 8008 which was the first general purpose single chip CPU I think.

[i-k]

Beautiful.. computer hardware is like magic