Popular Chip Timeline

Legend: uP = microprocessor uC = microcontroller Interesting Fact: Early computer games (video games) helped fuel much of the technology currently employed in modern computers! Example Motorola microprocessors and microcontrollers (*). Motorola Semiconductor is now Freescale Semiconductor:

1974: Motorola 6800 [8-bit] Motorola's first uP - First automobiles in 1975 that used uC/uP used derivatives of 6800 (Ford/GM). 1979: Motorola 68000 [16-bit] Original Apple Macintosh and Sega Genesis video game platform used this. ~1979: Motorola 6809 * [8-bit] Milton Bradley/GCE Vectrex (released in 1982) video game platform used this. ~1979: Motorola 6801 * ~1979: Motorola 6805 * ~1982: Motorola 68010 [16/32-bit] 1984: Motorola 68020 [32-bit] Used in Amiga, Apple Macintosh II, and Sun 3 workstations. World's first true 32-bit microprocessor. 1984: Motorola 68HC11 * [8-bit] Used in lots of embedded systems. Still popular today. 68HC12 is picking up popularity over the 68HC11--but they are very similar. 1987: Motorola 68030 [32-bit] Used in Amiga, Apple Macintosh II, and Sun 3 workstations. ~1989: Motorola 68332 * [32-bit] 1990: Motorola 68040 [32-bit] Used in Amiga, Apple Macintosh II, and Sun 3 workstations. 1993: Motorola ships first PowerPC 601 Actually designed by IBM (see below). 1994: Motorola 68060 [32-bit] Used in Amiga, Apple Macintosh II, and Sun 3 workstations. 1996: Motorola 68HC12 * [16-bit] Used heavily in automotive applications. 199-: Era of the PowerPC [32/64-bit] Used in IBM RS/6000 UNIX workstations, PowerMacs, Cisco networking equipment, and Nintendo GameCube. Custom derivatives used in PS3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Revolution (Nintendo Wii).

Example Intel/AMD microprocessors and microcontrollers (*):

1971: Intel 4004 [4-bit] World's first commercial microprocessor. 1973: Intel 8080 [8-bit] Started the uP market (4004 helped, but this guy got all the attention initially). 1976: Intel 8048 * [8-bit] Used in Magnavox Odyssey video game console, TV remotes, and other highvolume consumer electronics. 1978: Intel 8086 [16-bit] This guy marked the beginning of the "x86" architecture that virtually all modern Intel and AMD microprocessors are based upon today. 1979: Intel 8088 [16-bit] Used in the original IBM PC. 80188, 80288, and 80388 uCs were decendants of this architecture. 1980: Intel 8051 * [8-bit] Remains a very popular uC still (in 2005). Many vendors have designed derivative uCs based upon the 8051 core. 1982: Intel 80186 * Arguably not a real microcontroller--more of a microprocessor. 1983: Intel 80286 [16-bit] First uP to switch from real mode to protected mode. However, once in protected mode, it couldn't go back to real mode. MS-DOS ran in real mode. MS Windows runs in protected mode. 1984: Intel 8096 * 1986: Intel 80386 [32-bit] x86 architecture goes 32-bit. Able to switch back and forth between real mode and protected mode. Used in PCs from 1986 through 1994. 1989: Intel 80486 [32-bit] Enhanced 80386 with a few new instructions--including better clock rates, et cetera. 1993: Intel Pentium [32-bit] Informally known as the 80586 or i586. Was a superscalar architecture (multiple execution pipelines). MMX/SIMD instruction set additions in later models for use in multimedia applications. Pentium FDIV bug (problem in floating point unit) discovered in 1994. Resulted in reduced precision of division operations. Recalled defective microprocessors and fixed (while blushing). This begins the Celeron (value) and Xeon (high-end) varieties of microprocessors. 1995: Intel Pentium Pro [32-bit] Introduced out-of-order execution, speculative execution, and additional instruction pipeline for special instructions.

Pentium Pro ran slower than predecessor (plain Pentium) when executing 16-bit code. Was fast when executing 32-bit code. Windows 95 had just come out. Most Windows 95 applications were still 16-bit and some parts of the 32-bit Windows 95 OS were still 16-bit. World was still using Windows 3.1 (16-bit). Processor and cache were on separate dies. 1997: Intel Pentium II [32-bit] New SDRAM (synchronous, dynamic RAM) replaces EDO RAM. Introduction of the AGP bus. Used a slot-based form-factor--rather than a socket-based one. L2 cache was placed on independent die--but within the same microprocessor packaging. Celeron variety contained little or no L2 cache (mainstream market). Xeon variety contained a lot of L2 cache (high-end server market). 1999-2000: Intel Pentium III [32-bit] Informally known as the 80686 or i686. Added SSE instructions to Pentium II. Celeron and Xeon varieties available. 1.13 GHz version (released in mid-2000) was recalled due to stability problems with integrated cache. Re-released in 2001. 2000-2005: Intel Pentium 4 [32-bit] Developed many derivatives of the Pentium 4. Intel offers Celeron variety (low-end) and Xeon variety (high-end). Hyper-threading first shows up in Pentium 4 Xeon. Work begins on multi-core uPs. 2003: Intel Pentium M [32-bit] This architecture forms part of the Intel Centrino platform. Designed for use in mobile systems (laptops). Really is a heavily modified version of the Pentium III design. 2001: Intel Itanium, IA-64 [64-bit] Jointly developed by HP and Intel. Completely new instruction set! A pure 64-bit architecture. Performance amazing if all software is natively 64-bit. Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing (EPIC). Performance is disappointing with current software technology, so not widely accepted at the time. 32-bit, x86 code is machine translated to different instruction set with very poor performance. Few pure Itanium 64-bit applications on the market. Attractive to data centers--but not the commercial market. 2002-2004: Intel Itanium 2, IA-64 [64-bit] Jointly developed by HP and Intel. Developed many derivatives of the Itanium 2. 64-bit software and operating systems needed to achieve performance. 2003: AMD Opteron/Athlon 64 [64-bit] 64-bit processor (unlike Itanium) that is backwards compatible with 32-bit predecessor.

Just 64-bit extensions (x64) to 32-bit (x86). NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) architecture. Commercial market jumps on this 64-bit processor (more so than the Itanium) because old 32-bit code runs equally fast. 64-bit OS only required to run 64-bit applications. Customers have option to continuing running 32-bit applications and operating systems.

Others that may be of interest:

1975: MOS Technology 6502 [8-bit] Derivative used in Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). 1975: MOS Technology 6507 [8-bit] Used in Atari Video Computer System (i.e. the Atari 2600). Atari 2600 was marketed for ~13 years before it was discontinued (1977-1990). It was on the market longer than any video game system in history. 1979: Zilog Z-8000 [16-bit] One of the last uP developed by a single person. Used in Namco's Pole Position arcade video game. 1985: Acorn ARM [32-bit] One of the most widely used CPU designs in the world. The first commercially available RISC processor. Used in hard drives, mobile phones, network routers, calculators, et cetera. 1985: MIPS Computer Systems R2000 [32-bit] MIPS stands for "Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages" First commercially available MIPS processor. 1985: Sun Microsystems SPARC Architecture [32-bit] SPARC stands for "Scalable Processor Architecture" Heavily influenced by MIPS architecture. Designed and used for the Sun 4 workstation and server systems--replacing their earlier Sun 3 systems based on the Motorola 68000 family. Architecture was (and still is) licensed to many companies who have developed and fabricated many implementations. 1988: MIPS Computer Systems R3000 [32-bit] Used in many Silicon Graphics (SGI) systems. Used in the original Sony Playstation. 1991: MIPS Computer Systems R4000 [64-bit] One of the first 64-bit microprocessor architectures. 1992: IBM MCP601 [32-bit] First-generation PowerPC chip. Also known as: Motorola PPC601. Motorola starting making and shipping them in 1993. Beginning of Apple/IBM/Motorola (AIM) initiative. First 64-bit PowerPC processor was PPC620. 1992: DEC Alpha 21064 [64-bit] DEC stands for "Digital Equipment Corporation" (or just Digital)

1995:

199-:

At the time considered to be one of the fastest chips for floating point mathematics. Designed to replace the 32-bit VAX instruction set architectures (CISC) and its implementations. HAL Computer/Fujitsu SPARC64 [64-bit] First 64-bit SPARC architecture processor. TI MSP430 * [16-bit] (discussing/using in this course) Particularly attractive for embedded applications due to low power consumption. RISC architecture.

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