
Microprocessors: 1971 to 1996 (2007) - cvursache
http://www.computerhistory.org/microprocessors/
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kens
This diagram is also in poster form:
[http://tcm.computerhistory.org/Timeline/25YearsMicroprocesso...](http://tcm.computerhistory.org/Timeline/25YearsMicroprocessor1996.jpg)

I would quibble about a few things. It shows an architectural relationship
between the 4004 and 8008, which isn't the case. It shows the almost-unknown
TMC 1795, but doesn't show its architectural relation with the 8008. It shows
the TMS 0100 and TMS 1000 microcontrollers but not other microcontrollers.
Lots of early microprocessors are omitted, giving the impression that not much
was happening back then. The lack of ARM1 is disappointing; it shows ARM
starting with ARM6. But overall a very interesting diagram.

~~~
Zardoz84
Texas instruments had some CPUs on late 80's early 90's that was the core of
TIGA graphics cards -> TMS34010

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codeulike
No Acorn ARM? (eg as used in Acorn Archimedes, 1987)

It turned out to be more important than any of these.

edit: ah they have the ARM, but not until 1991 for some reason.

~~~
david-given
When I visited the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, the complete
absence of any mention of ARM in their history of microcontrollers was
slightly amusing. Lots of Motorola, Intel, etc silicon (including some
_really_ nice exhibits of half-made silicon ingots), but no mention of the
architecture which has sold over 50 billion units.

I asked at reception and apparently yes, they do get funding from Intel...

Do go visit, though; it's brilliant. Not _quite_ as good as the National
Museum of Computing in the UK, which will let you go and play with a lot of
the exhibits, and which has a working decatron computer, but it's still well
worth a trip.

~~~
kens
It's not quite that bad; there's an ARM1 die photo opposite the silicon ingots
at the museum. I think the lack of ARM there is more due to the interesting
artifacts being in England than an Intel conspiracy.

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georgeecollins
You would never guess from this how successful ARM ended up being. Die size is
going up and transistor size is going up. They aren't even in that race. It is
a great example of a paradigm disruption.

~~~
PeCaN
Is “make a pretty generic RISC processor and license it” really “disruption”?
ARM didn't do anything especially novel, they did one thing really well. They
read the Berkley SPARC papers and made a simple CPU. It's the same thing as
MIPS, i960, and Am29k. The difference being ARM's Acorn computer was rather
unsuccessful so they licensed the ARM IP instead.

They were very much in a race with MIPS, Intel, and AMD. They won by doing the
same thing everyone else did, but by doing it quite well.

Silicon Valley terminology is getting stupider by the day.

~~~
kens
I view the ARM as a perfect example of disruption in the Innovator's Dilemma
sense. Intel has always been pushing the boundaries of processor design, using
as many transistors as possible, and nobody could threaten them with better
technology.

The ARM1 on the other hand was built to be simple (because the designers
hadn't built a processor before). They didn't care at all about maximizing
density (the layout is pretty awful). They cared about low power consumption
only to the degree it meant they could use cheaper packaging.

But this low-end ARM processor managed to hit the low-power needs of mobile
devices (starting with the Newton). And now the ARM processor is a serious
threat to Intel, not because ARM out-raced Intel at the more-transistors game,
but because ARM was a simpler, cheaper product that disrupted the market.

I think 99% of the people who use the word "disruption" haven't read The
Innovator's Dilemma (and they should), but to me the ARM clearly fits the
pattern in the book.

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watmough
Weird. I remember in 1988 that we had a Dell 286 that I rather thought was one
of the fastest PC's around, and that the 386/486 etc., didn't show up on the
street until well into the 90's.

We routed 6 layer PC cards on it ... all night.

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dboreham
"This exhibit sponsored by Intel Corp" ?

