Intel 4004 unique video posted on youtube

[free_electron]

The computer history museum of Mountain View posted a unique promo video of intels 4004 processor. This film dates back to the early 70's and was an introduction to the microprocessor.
Film made by intel

[SeanB]

I've only got one 4004 and some peripherals.

[Zad]

Is that Collin Cunningham at 00:36?


http://blog.makezine.com/maker/collin-cunningham/

Yes I do realise the video is quite a few years before Collin was born, but you have to admit, the similarity is striking!

[Nermash]

I am guessing Intel charged an arm and a leg for that custom mask ROM?

[free_electron]

not really. mask roms were pretty cheap as they ran in volume. the first mask roms only had one metal layer. it was just a matter of creating the mask with the via's. if there is a via it is a 0 if there isnon it is a 1. so you only paid for the making of one mask and the rest was mass production.
of course this is not something you do for 5 parts ....

[TerminalJack505]

Is that Collin Cunningham at 00:36?

Holy crap!  Collin has obviously invented a time machine!  Either that or he has discovered the Fountain of Youth. 

Or, maybe he's an android.

Great video.

[amspire]

I never saw the 4004 as important as Intel wanted it to be.

I am not even sure if Intel was the first microcontroller. The TI Pico calculator chip was probably out a year earlier then the 4004, and the 4004 was probably not used for much other then calculators anyway. The advantage of the 4004 is that it could be run of an Eprom for development, whereas the TI Pico was mask programmable only with no development environment.

Designers at the time usually went for the discreet logic solution rather then the slow and expensive 4004 with 256 bytes of ROM. The 4004 was a multichip solution to do anything serious, and companies like Fairchild had multi-chip CPU's several years before the 4004.

The 8008 was much more important with real cpu features like Interrupts, and the 8080 was the chip that really started the micro revolution.

Richard.

[notsob]

There was also the National Semiconductor SC/MP micro in the early '70s

[RCMR]

I think the biggest hurdle to the 4004 was the need for so much expensive development kit.

A computer that ran Fortran (and thus could be used as a code simulator) was pretty spendy back then.

Even a TTY setup wasn't the kind of thing most EEs had in their back rooms.

There was a critical bootstrapping process that had to occur before microprocessors were powerful enough to allow them to be part of the development toolset for making new microprocessor-based systems.

The 8080 was the first chip that offered enough power to haul itself up by its own boot(strap) laces and make development affordable.

[ivan747]

Is that Collin Cunningham at 00:36?

Holy crap!  Collin has obviously invented a time machine!  Either that or he has discovered the Fountain of Youth. 

Or, maybe he's an android.

Great video.

Nope. The Intel guy's ears are more rounded.