Intel marks 40th anniversary

Forty years ago, Intel Corporation introduced the world's first commercially available microprocessor - the IntelR 4004 - triggering the start of the digital revolution. While most people have never seen a microprocessor, devices that contain them have become so integrated into daily life that they have become virtually indispensable.

Microprocessors are the "brains" inside computers, servers, phones, cars, cameras, refrigerators, radios, TVs and many other everyday devices. The proliferation of microprocessors is due in large part to Intel's relentless pursuit of Moore's Law, a forecast for the pace of silicon technology development that states that roughly every two years transistor density of semiconductors will double, while increasing functionality and performance and decreasing costs. It has become the basic business model for the semiconductor industry for more than 40 years.

Compared to the Intel 4004, today's second-generation Intel Core processors are more than 350,000 times the performance and each transistor uses about 5,000 times less energy. In this same time period, the price of a transistor has dropped by a factor of about 50,000. Future microprocessors developed on Intel's next-generation 22nm manufacturing process are due in systems starting next year and will deliver even more energy-efficient performance as a result of the company's breakthrough 3-D Tri-Gate transistors that make use of a new transistor structure.

These transistors usher in the next era of Moore's Law and make possible a new generation of innovations across a broad spectrum of devices. GW