News: Rochester Electronics
Processing the history of microprocessors
A 50-year retrospective – by Rochester Electronics T
he year is 1971, the company is Intel, and the product is the first- ever commercial microprocessor. Released to the market as the Intel 4004 and developed by Ted Hoff, Masatoshi Shima, Stanley Mazor, and Federico Faggin, as a “Microcomputer on a chip,” the term “microprocessor” wouldn’t be used until the following year. Following the commercial success of Busicom’s 141- PF calculator, the stage was set for the microprocessor’s entrance.
Only three years after the 4004’s release, Intel unveiled the Intel 8080 and took the world by storm. Executing 290,000 instructions per second and 16 kilobytes of memory, the 8-bit 8080 is credited by some as kicking off the microcomputer revolution. The 8080 was even used in the world’s first personal computer, MITS’ Altair 8800.
Microprocessor technology would improve by leaps and bounds for the rest of the 70s. In 1979, the MC68000 pushed the envelope with its 32-bit design, expansive memory, and fast computational speeds, Motorola’s microprocessor not only became a hit for companies like Apple and Atari but set the stage for the developments of the next decade. The 1980s were the decade of the personal computer. Going from universities and corporations into the home, the computer became a common sight. The competition between Apple and IBM was in full conflict, the video game console became a household staple, and the seeds of the modern internet were planted. Meanwhile, microprocessors raced ahead in progress. In 1987, Sun Microsystems unveiled the groundbreaking Scalable Processor Architecture or “SPARC,” a highly successful RISC microprocessor system. Thanks to its enhanced efficiency and ability to perform two to five times faster, the RISC processor transformed technology. Today, SPARC remains a staple in many hardware systems.
The same decade built on the innovations of the previous decade. Both IBM’s PC and Microsoft’s MS-DOS utilized the Intel 8088,
6 March 2025
while Apollo’s DN100 took advantage of the Motorola 68000.
In the British market, Acorn Computers released the first ARM microprocessor in 1987. While initially released only in the UK in the Acorn Archimedes PC, ARM chips eventually became common worldwide. This embedded 32-bit microprocessor was a revolution for consumer electronics and is now the most utilized 32-bit processor of all time. If the 1980s were the time of building on fundamentals, the 1990s were the time of consolidation. Companies merged, disparate processes combined, the internet-connected millions, and modern computer architecture emerged. In turn, Intel broke the tradition of naming microprocessors numerically, instead releasing 1991’s Intel Pentium. Brands were now intertwined with the company, rather than a product number.
In another display of market forces combining, 1994’s PowerPC 601 was born from an unlikely team. In an unexpected partnership, Apple, Motorola, and IBM joined forces to create the Apple IBM Motorola PowerPC 601, also known as the AIM PowerPC 601, which went on to process game consoles and a decade of Apple’s Macintosh products. Did you know that Rochester continues to provide support for the PowerPC? The MPC8xx family was Motorola’s first
Components in Electronics
PowerPC-based embedded processor branded as the PowerQUICC. The processors supported the entire spectrum of embedded networking equipment, industrial, and general-embedded applications. NXP Semiconductors’ (formerly of Freescale) QorIQ ARM-based processors evolved from PowerQUICC.
NXP, through its Freescale and Motorola- SPS heritage, has been supporting PowerPC processors for over 25 years. The PowerPC was a 32- and 64-bit processor architecture with multi-vendor support and an extensive ecosystem of software and development tools. These processors have been designed into a variety of embedded applications, which included communication, networking, medical, automotive, and industrial products. Intel developed the IA64 RISC architecture and following on the Pentium, developed Xeon and Celeron in the late 90s. The company began 64-bit development in 1991, and the first systems with its 64-bit Itanium CPUs shipped in 2001.
AMD, however, drove the market and tech-forward with the now standard 64-bit standard. Balancing 64-bit and 32-bit device
specifications, the AMD64 processor launched in 2003 and is still commonly used today. Processors moved from dual to quad and now multi-core processors, as it became too difficult to continue to double the bit count after 64 bits but was instead more efficient to add multiple cores to share the processing requirements.
Rochester looks back on the industry’s history with respect to all that came before. 50 years have led to today, 50 years of improvements, and 50 years of innovation. 2024’s technological landscape would not be here today without the products of yesteryear and the minds who made it possible. Rochester Electronics provides continuing product lifecycle support for decades of microprocessors.
Our processor portfolio includes over 76 million units comprised of over 15,000-part numbers. We provide continued production on many legacy and end-of-life (EOL) processors through licensing, die banks, and die product replications. All of our in-stock devices are 100 per cent authorised, traceable, certified, guaranteed, and risk-free from our supplier partners including NXP, Intel, Texas Instruments, onsemi, Renesas, and many more.
For more information visit:
www.rocelec.com
www.cieonline.co.uk
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