Download A CPU history

A CPU History
By: Daniel Pedroza
The First CPU
• The first cpu was created on
November, 1971, by intel a company
who introduced the world's first
single chip microprocessor for a
calculator.
The Groovy Seventies
• The seventies were a good time for intel, mostly because they were the first
players in the game. Motorola jumped in rapidly thereafter, however, and brought
out the ubiquitous 6800 and later the even more important 68000 during the
same timeframe. Even today, however, 808x CPUs are more popular in embedded
systems than the more powerful Motorola 68000, if for no other reason than
inertia. Intel got there first, and got the ball rolling. A great deal of their installed
base comes from the fact that the IBM PC and every clone of it thereafter
carried an intel CPU.
• IBM also invented the first RISC(reduced instruction set computer) CPU during
this decade (barely). They began work on it way back in 1975. That chip was
never released but concepts in its design made it all the way into the PowerPC by
way of ROMP and then POWER.
• 1976: TMS9900 (TI) first 16 bit
microprocessor.
• 1971: 4004 (Intel) used in the Unicom
1976: Z80 (Zilog) the z80's instruction set is
calculator. First microprocessor. 4 bits,
a superset of the Intel 8080. It later
2300 transistors, 740 kHz, 0.06 MIPS.
becomes one of the most ubiquitous
1975: MC6501 (MOS) pin-compatible with
embedded processors of all time. The de
Motorola MC6800, leading to a lawsuit
facto standard for computers running
against MOS.
CP/M. Also featured in the radio shack TRS1976: 8085 (Intel) improved version of the 80 and the Nintendo game boy,and others.
8080; Uses only +5V, where 8080 needs
1978: 8086 (Intel) used (later) in the IBM PC.
several voltages, and with additional
Also, the complementary 8087 math
instructions as well.
coprocessor.
1979: 801 (IBM) first RISC CPU made. Never
commercialized.
1979: Z8000 (Zilog) 16 bit chip.
1979: MC68000 (Motorola) 16 bit processor
with 24 bit addressing.
Intel 8080
The intel 8080
Mc6800
The Eighties
• The 1980s, the digital age. This is the time when everything
exploded. All the chips we love (and love to hate) were born here
-- the 286 (possibly Intel's most crippled chip in its time); The
68020 which was not only a big step forward from the 68000 for
its instruction set, but also for being the first 32 bit processor;
The ARM CPUs (including the first marketed RISC processor); The
386 and 486 which brought PCs into the 32 bit era; As well as
RISC products from sun (sparc), MIPS (R3000), and IBM (ROMP).
 1981: 80186 and 80188 (Intel) x86-compatible,
 1987: Sparc (sun and LSI logic) Sparc is
primarily used in embedded systems as they
actually a U Berkeley-derived design for a
contain DMA and timer circuits.
truly RISC processor, IE one which
 1984: MC68020 (Motorola) the first true 32-bit
executes one operation per cycle. The first
microprocessor.
Sparc CPUs rolled out in 1987 to replace the
 1984: V20 and V30 (NEC) first clones of Intel's
68000-family CPUs sun was previously
8088 and 8086,
using to build their systems.
 1985: ARM1 and ARM2 (acorn) ARM2 was the first
 1987: MC68030 (Motorola) 32 bit processor
commercially available RISC processor. ARM1 is
with 32 bit address bus, used in Macintosh,
also risks, but never made it to market.
sun, and amigo computers (among many
1985: R2000 (MIPS) first commercially available
others.)
MIPS processor.
 1986: ROMP (IBM) RISC processor used in the IBM
 1988: 80386SX (Intel) cheaper alternative
RT PC, a business system which failed in part
because of its name ("personal computer").
to than 386DX, used 16 bit time-multiplexed
Successor of IBM 801, predecessor of IBM POWER
bus to perform 32 bit data transfers (in 2
architecture which eventually lead to PowerPC.
cycles) at a cost in memory bandwidth.
(June 16, 1988)
The Nineties
• This is where home computers began to really have the "juice" to wow
people. The MIPS R4000 fueled high-end Unix workstations which were busy
making movies. IBM and Motorola got together and with input from apple
began work on and realized their new PowerPC architecture. Intel brought
out the Pentium followed by the Pentium MMX, Pentium 2, and the Pentium 3,
and all were huge hits.
• AMD got into the high-power game with several RISC CPUs which would
interpret x86 instructions: K5, K6, and Athlon. The Athlon got them into a
serious battle with intel over CPU supremacy, which pretty much brings us
to our current situation - everyone making a significant CPU today has
enough power to stay in the race.
 1990: RS6000 (IBM) POWER architecture chip, 1992: MCP601 (IBM) first-generation
predecessor of PowerPC CPU. Partitioned
PowerPC chip,
RISC design lends itself to superscalar
processing - this is the first superscalar  1992: alpha 21064 (digital) 64 bit
processor, capable of executing multiple
processor, considered to be one of
instructions at once.
the fastest chips for floating point
 1991: am386 (AMD) breaks the intel 32 bit
mathematics.
x86 monopoly.
 1991: R4000 (MIPS) first 64 bit processor.  1993: Pentium P54C (intel) intel
 1991: 486SX (intel) processor with no
begins to use some RISC style
onboard FPU(floating point unit). Introduced
processing. First superscalar x86as a low-cost budget processor; Originals
family processor.
are actually remarked 486DX chips with
faulty FPUs disabled. (April 22, 1991)

1993: PowerPC 603 (IBM and Motorola)
drops some POWER architecture features
in the 601, runs significantly faster.
 1994: PowerPC 604 and 620 (IBM). 620 is
the first 64 bit implementation of
PowerPC (as opposed to POWER).
1994: R8000 (MIPS) first superscalar
MIPS design.
 1995: Pentium pro (intel) A great deal of added
cache. Sets the stage for the Pentium 2 (whose
design is largely based on the PPro) and Pentium
MMX (P55C).
 1995: SuperSparc 2 (sun)
 1995: UltraSparc (sun) 64-bit sparc processor.
 1995: StrongARM (arm+digital) RISC chip
intended for embedded systems, somewhat
based on the ARM architecture. Owned by digital,
who got bought by Compaq, who sold the
StrongARM to intel (the current owner).
•
1996: K5 (AMD) AMD's first internally-RISC x86compatible processor. Basically a 486 on steroids,
and intended to compete with the Pentium. (March
27, 1996)
•
•
•
1997: Pentium 2 (intel) based on the Pentium pro,
and carrying the MMX features of the P55C. First
x86 processor on a module, with L2 cache on the PC
board. (All former x86 CPUs utilize L2 cache on the •
motherboard.)
•
1997: K6 (AMD) first Pentium 2 competitor, based
on a RISC design with an x86 translation layer.
Suffers due to slow and incompatible (24 as
opposed to 32 bit) FPU. (April 2, 1997)
•
1998: Pentium 2 Xeon (intel) where the p2's L2
cache runs at half speed, the Xeon's runs at full
speed, and is available from 512kb to 8mb.
1999: Celeron (intel) bargain version of the Pentium
2. Early versions have no L2 cache; Later versions
have a reduced amount of L2 (128kb) which runs at
full speed rather than the p2's half speed.
1999: Pentium 3 (intel) based on the p2's design,
new core. Substantially faster than P2. Adds
additional SIMD extensions beyond MMX.
1999: Athlon (AMD) AMD's competitor to Pentium 2.
Features 100mhz DDR bus for three times the bus
bandwidth of intel CPUs (compared to then-current
66mhz Pentium 2 bus.) Intel Pentium chipsets later
feature 100mhz bus (non-DDR.)
•
1999: K6-3 (AMD) last revision in K6 line, improves
speed of multimedia functions and makes new
clock rates available.
The Current Now
• In the 21st century, the race continues. AMD and intel have essentially
equivalent juggernauts which for the first time (beginning in the 90s with
the coexistence of Pentium 3 and Athlon) compete directly and strongly with
one another. Meanwhile, both companies have 64 bit designs with instruction
sets based on x86, and the outcome of that match is as unclear as the
outcome of Pentium 4 vs. Athlon XP.
• Meanwhile everyone else has already gone 64 bit (MIPS, sparc) or is about
to go 64 bit (PowerPC). It looks like the 21st century will be the age of the
quad word.
•
•
2000: Pentium 4 (intel) less efficient than P3
•
cycle for cycle, with a harsher penalty for
incorrect branch prediction (due to a longer
pipeline
•
But supports much higher clock rates partly due
to finer (.18 micron) process and partly due to
the longer pipeline. Bus speeds increase to as
•
much as 533mhz in order to compete with Athlon.
•
2000: Athlon XP and Athlon MP (AMD) full speed
L2 cache, and a new 133mhz DDR bus (equivalent
to 266mhz.) MP is "designed" for multiprocessor
use.
2000: Crusoe TM5400 and TM5600 (Transmeta).
Crusoe is a "code-morphing" processor which
uses dynamic JIT recompilation to run code
designed for other processors, though to date
only the intel x86 instruction set is supported.
•
2001: itanium (intel) Intel's first 64 bit CPU. Low
clock rates (through 2002) but true 64 bit.
Explicitly parallel instruction computing (EPIC).
Uses a new instruction set, IA-64, which not is
based on x86. Extremely poor at emulating x86.
2002: itanium 2 (intel) supports higher clock
rates than itanium and has a shorter pipeline to
reduce the cost of a bad branch prediction.
2002: scale (intel) StrongARM II. Tight, fast
embedded processor which uses the ARM
instruction set. Based on StrongARM, which
was bought from Compaq
2002: R16000 (SGI) MIPS 4 architecture, 64KB
L1 and 4MB L2 cache, and with out-of-order
execution (OoO.)
 2003: Opteron/Athlon 64 (AMD) AMD's
 2003: Pentium M (Intel) also: Centrino.
x86-64 processors, collectively code
Formerly code-named Banias, this is an
named "hammer". Opteron has more cache
advanced low-power rehash of the
and two hyper transport (HT) links per
Pentium 3 processor, more efficient than
CPU, allowing for glue-less SMP; Athlon 64
Pentium 4. Intel announced that multihas one. A mobile (low power) version is
core Pentium M processors would take
also available. There are a number of
over for the P4, whose scalability is
revisions, starting with "ClawHammer"
running out.
(130nm) memory controller is on-die, so
hypertransport only has to handle
 2004: Athlon XP-M (AMD) low-power
communication with peripherals, and
version of the Athlon XP processor, the
memory attached to other CPUs. (NUMA
slowest (2700+) part draws 35W with
architecture.)
512kb L2 cache.
 2003: PowerPC 9xx/g5 (IBM) 64 bit
PowerPC processor. The G5 in the power  2005: Athlon 64 X2 (AMD) first dual-core
64 bit desktop processor.
Macintosh is the 970.
Sources
•
•
1.
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1362904
http://www.commodore.ca/history/people/chuck_peddle/Intel_4004_worlds_first_micropro
cessor.gif
Great microprocessors of the past and present. John Bayko, march 2002.
(Http://www3.sk.sympatico.Ca/jbayko/cpu.Html)