Talk:Intel 4004

message: The book "California, a History" by Kevin Starr(p266) compares the 4004 and the ENIAC and says the 4004 was "one sixteenth of an inch long". Is this correct?
~~A. Reader  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.105.63.69 (talk) 01:48, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The 16 pin DIP package has two rows of pins 0.3 (7.62mm) inches apart, with a spacing between pins of 0.1 (0.254mm) inches. That makes the entire packaged chip about .9 inches long and .3 inches wide. The left hand package in the main picture has the cover removed, the chip is larger than the pin spacing so it is larger than .1 inches. I'd say that it is closer to "one eighth of an inch long" than "one sixteenth of an inch long" Ferritecore (talk) 15:04, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: How big is it?

message: I'm a little unsure about the following passage, deleted (and slightly modified) from a previous revision of this article:
:For calculator and controller use the 4004 was a very effective design. As of 2003, there are reportedly even a few traffic light control systems still in use built with these chips.
If someone cares to do research on this, feel free .  It would certainly be an interesting anecdote. Wernher 23:35, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems like it'd be overkill when you could make a suitable solid-state traffic light switching system using discrete logic, and it'd need to interface to a bunch of heavy duty relays somehow anyway. But, it might have ended up that the cheapest and easiest way to implement the control logic was with a 4004 and single ROM (and maybe a single RAM if there was a push-to-request pedestrian crossing included, or vehicle sensor loops) instead of soldering a bunch of transistors, resistors and diodes to a PCB (or at least, a couple dozen of them than you'd otherwise use...). Heck, you could probably make a system that would read the pattern out of a couple of 4000-series ROMs by single stepping through addresses (using a fairly simple TTL binary counter and a 555 timer) and using the raw output from the chips to drive the light relays, with e.g. the length of a yellow light being the calibrated single-step part of the whole cycle. I remember playing with such on a home electronics experiment board, which had a very simplistic 16-nibble RAM you could program with a quintet of switches (4 to set the pattern, 1 to write it) - which could be jumpered to various external binary (or analogue-through-a-discriminator) inputs - then read out, sequentially, via a single-step counter with jumperable increment and reset buttons (and a separate 555 + pot set up to provide variable frequency pulses from about once a minute to maybe 100Hz), to drive a set of four coloured LEDs, a hex-decipering 7-seg display, a buzzer that changed its frequency to match the coded value, various motors and bulbs, or some arbitrary external device. No microprocessor in it at all, just the RAM and the counter. One of the projects was coding a traffic light (or light-controlled crosswalk) cycle - for either a single direction with 3- or 4-aspect lights, or two directions with 2-aspect ones... 193.63.174.211 (talk) 09:23, 2 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: 4004-driven traffic lights

message: I moved the "adware warning" against http://www.intel4004.com/ from the ext lk description itself into an intra-section footnote: "Site has been reported to contain adware/spyware." If someone cares to investigate this further, please do so. --Wernher 22:52, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There seems to be a web bug on the home page of http://www.intel4004.com/, namely http://www.intel4004.com/images/blank_trans.gif, this has privacy implications although whether this web bug can be classified as adware and/or spyware I am unsure. Perhaps this issue has something to do with the bad blood between Faggin and Intel (just my little theory). If someone cares to investigate this even further, please do so. Slark 17:04, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I removed the adware/spyware claim pending some actual information. Mirror Vax 17:51, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

text: McAfee's SiteAdvisor reports that it links to a couple of shady sites, webstats4u.com and itrack.it. --Traal 23:41, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

text: I don't get it!? Pluke 21:47, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See Ussher chronology. Ferritecore 11:18, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Adware/spyware warning

message: The 4004 marked the 4004BC of modern computing.
:I don't get it!? Pluke 21:47, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See Ussher chronology. Ferritecore 11:18, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Jokes

message: I removed Image:Intel-4004-schematics.png from the article because it was 1.5MB, which is far too large to appear in an article. Could someone who knows how to do images please replace it with a small thumbnail. 58.179.129.241 00:48, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Large image 

message: I added "A curious coincidence" because I thought that the story of the naming of the 4004 was interesting and also the coincidence with the date 4004 B.C.  
surprising. 
viuz 22:19, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry I deleted this section. One must admit this is a 'cute' little coincidence, but you should present it in a way which doesn't assume creationism. --hydrox 02:20, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I find this "curious coincidence" interesting because a break from an established part numbering system suggests that the chooser-of-numbers thought that this family of chips was a significant break from the established product line. A little documentation and a more encyclopedic presentation and I think the break in numbering conventions fits in as more than just a coincidence. It speaks to the significance of this chip offering, and that the significance was realized at the time. Any speculation as to why the specific number 4004 was chosen remains just speculation absent some supporting evidence. The relationship between the   part number of this chip and the Usher chronology is likely just coincidence. It is just as likely that somebody thought a palindrome looked nice. Ferritecore 03:37, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

text: I think with some rewording the section should go back in. As it was, it's not a hard stretch to read it without assuming creationism, so the text is nearly fine. Or perhaps it can be prefaced or couched in text that alerts the reader to the more informal nature of the paragraph. Joe 19:50, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, and done right it could possibly fit in the history section. Ferritecore 21:50, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: A curious coincidence

message: I removed the following:
:The Intel 4004 CPU had 17 times the computing power of the 1946 ENIAC vacuum tube supercomputer, which weighed 33 tons and occupied 212 square metres of floor space.
This seems to be comparing add time (10.8us on 4004 vs. 200us on ENIAC, although that is closer to 18.5). This is an unfair comparison as the 4004 is adding only 1 digit in this time and ENIAC is adding 10 digits (single precision) or 20 digits (double precision). Also ENIAC was parallel in 1946 and could be doing additions in up to 20 accumulators at the same time.
By my calculations they are from roughly comparable to ENIAC being somewhere over 10 times faster; although this would require actual 4004 code for 10 digit addition to be certain which probably required several instructions per digit, not just one.
I don't believe any fair comparison of the two machines could be done in one single number like this. -- RTC 00:13, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The Intel 4004 CPU had the computing power of the 1946 ENIAC vacuum tube supercomputer, which weighed 30 tons and occupied 167 square metres of floor space.
While this is more realistic, I still don't believe a single number can accurately and fairly compare the two machines. -- RTC 00:27, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

text: Not only can't one compare the 4004 to the 1946 ENIAC with a single number, but in fact the people who like to trot out this comparison always seem to assume that the 4004 must have been faster, simply because it was newer, even though the truth was quite the reverse. As you already commented, ENIAC in its original form could be parallelized, and even one of its multiple accumulators could do a 10-digit decimal addition around 5 times faster than the 4004. (At its maximum clock speed, the 4004 would take 850 µs for an 8-digit decimal add of one memory operand to another, and a 10-digit one would probably take around 1080 µs, while a single ENIAC accumulator only needed 200 µs for the same operation.) Plus the ENIAC had special multiply and divide/square-root units, something completely beyond the 4004. It's true that ENIAC was slowed greatly when it was converted to stored-program operation in 1948, and it lost its ability to do operations in parallel. A comparison between this machine and the 4004 would be much fairer. But the comparisons I see, always using the original, 1946 ENIAC, strike me as a sloppy attempt to make a "golly gee whiz look how much things have advanced" contrast without actually checking to see if it's true. *grump* --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 07:26, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  4004 vs. ENIAC 

message: There's the statement in the article that the 4004 was not a "single chip microprocessor", as "contrary to popular belief". I find this somewhat confusing; admittedly, the 4004 was not a "stand-alone" chip, of the later sort that included RAM, ROM, and/or IO multiplexing, but did anyone ever think it was? As I recall the times, the chip was the first to be a microprocessor on a single chip - the fact that the RAM or ROM was separate isn't relevant, really. Ofc, even the very newest Pentiums still don't contain memory. Anyways, I think this needs clarification, but I wasn't sure how to fix it. Is there a distinct category called "single-chip micro" which specifically refers to having all major functions onboard a single chip? I'm not familiar with the semantics here, but clearly the 4004 was the first processor on a single chip. Eaglizard 21:51, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This goes to the heart of the discussion as to whether the Central Air Data Computer was a microprocessor and did it beat the 4004 by 1 year.  Alatari (talk) 06:08, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

text: To beletedly answer the point.  It was not considered a single chip microprocessor, because not everything required to make it work was on the chip itself.  For example, the processor required an extenally generated 2 phase clock signal as well as a 4008 and/or 4009 to actually interface with ROM, RAM or I/O.  It is true that all the processing elements were on the one chip but seldom, at that time, the support logic.   This state of affairs continued for some time after the 4004 with many well known microprocessors actually occupying more than one chip.  Even many of the big selling chips still in use by the early 1980's still came as multiple chip sets.  The Intel 8080 was a three chip set and the Motorola 6800 still required a separate 6870 clock generator.  Even the ubiquitous Z80 still required an external clock generator.  The Intel 8085 (introduced 1977) still theoretically required an additional chip to separate out the control and multiplexed bus signals but arguably it qualified as a single chip processor because by this time, Intel had developed memory and input/output chips which could directly cope with these signals. 109.156.49.202 (talk) 16:29, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Single--chip microprocessor? 

message: I recently viewed a video by the Computer History Museum in which Ted Hoff and Federico Faggin talked about the 4004, and at one point Federico says, "... the most remarkable application, of which I feel very ... proud, is the 4004 is one of the few artifacts that have gone beyond the asteroid belts in Pioneer 10 ... It's a major piece of artwork up in space". This wiki article states that it's just a myth, however. Was Federico kidding around? -- MP64 (talk) 07:20, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I doubt he was kidding around; he probably just didn't know any better. It's an attractive story, and Federico was in engineering, not sales, so he'd have no reason to know the story was false. --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 07:39, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pioneer 10 

message: The MCS-4 manual states there was some publicly availble 4004 software:
* a cross-assembler and simulator running on the PDP-8 in FORTRAN IV
* subroutines for AND, OR, and XOR
* a 16-digit decimal addition routine
* Chebychev polynomial approximation routines for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponents, natural logs, sine, cosine, and arctangent
Is any of this still available?  A quick search of the usual places didn't turn up anything useful (but intel400.com again/still has an infection). Dugong.is.good.tucker (talk) 16:19, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: looking for old software

message: I am not an expert, but various articles, googling, and a patent listed on the page
suggest that mazor should be mentioned as one of the designers.
He was a co-recipient of the kyoto prize for the 4004.
AllanGottlieb (talk) 01:07, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  I believe stan mazor should be mentioned 

message: Why does today's main page list 60,000 instructions per second when it says 92,000 here?!? CapnZapp (talk) 21:22, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  instructions per second? 

message: Historical articles on the MCM/70 appear to suggest (perhaps incorrectly) that the 8008 was also supported by the MCS-4. Does anyone know for sure? If this is wrong I'd like to set the record straight. Maury Markowitz (talk) 11:27, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  MCS-4 and 8008? 

message: A distinction should be made between the early original MCS-4 documents, and later recollections  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.18.188.109 (talk) 22:14, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  MCS-4 historical and recent documents 

message: Please explain where and why. I remove the banner till this is done. Audriusa (talk) 09:58, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original research? 

message: I put a citation needed tag after the claim that the 4004 was predated by the TMS 1000. The citation in the Microprocessor article, from the Smithsoninan, says that the TMS 1000 was developed "about the same time that Intel fashioned the first microprocessor", actually giving credit to Intel for the first microprocessor. That citation also has a disclaimer that says it is not guaranteed to be accurate. Rsduhamel (talk) 19:47, 25 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I am now reading "The Intel Trinity"  The Intel Trinity  which has many insider details on Intel products. I haven't finished yet, though. Gah4 (talk) 00:14, 8 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Predated by TMS 1000 

message: (Sock puppet of banned user trying to imply that because Busicom commissioned a calculator architecture from Intel they were co-inventors of the microprocessor.)  It seems to me that this depends somewhat on the actual input from Busicom.  As well as I know it, they did more than just commission (supply money for), but actually did much of the design.  One could see what the patent says, for example.  Gah4 (talk) 23:31, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: These details are pretty well covered in reliable sources and anyone who wants to add more detail to that narrative is welcome to do so.  In the edits I reverted, however, banned user Jagged 85, infamous for his misuse of sources and misattribution of scientific and technological developments to non-Western inventors (see Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Jagged_85/Evidence and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jagged 85/Computer Games Evidence for examples) spins a completely erroneous tale of a Japanese woman formulating the entire 4000-series chipset back in 1968, which was subsequently presented to Bob Noyce by Sharp engineer Tadashi Sasaki, who convinced Busicom to fund the project.  Jagged reaches this conclusion by completely misreading an oral history with Sasaki, in which the engineer merely states that the Japanese woman was the first person he was aware of that articulated the general theory of a single-chip Van Neumann architecture and that he subsequently discussed the idea of the microprocessor with Noyce in 1968, while also connecting Busicom and Intel for a the calculator project, which was not based on a single-chip CPU at that point.  Sasaki does not claim that the design of the 4004 was already articulated at that point or that he sent Busicom to Intel to fund the 4004.  This is the kind of nonsense that got Jagged banned. Indrian (talk) 00:13, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes.  Just to be sure, I was not at all trying to argue for Jagged 85, but just for the real story.  As well as I remember knowing it from years ago, Busicom went to Intel to produce what would now be called ASICs. Not generally useful for anything other than a specific type of calculator, and that it was all Intel that instead produced the 4004.  But as I understand it now, Busicom was active in the discussion process, and may have helped with the logic design. There may have been politics in the patent process, or maybe just money. Exactly why no-one from Busicom is on the patent may be lost in history.  Oh, as I understand it, the 4004 is Harvard architecture, with separate instruction and data address space. Gah4 (talk) 00:59, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Gotcha.  Yeah, Shima was intimately involved in the logic design, which is under reported in most sources.  That involvement was not really planned though and came about because what was supposed to be a completed chip when he came to Intel had barely been started.  Nothing wrong with playing up that role so long as the article is clear that Intel took the lead in developing the concept. Indrian (talk) 02:25, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Co-invention 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: (stated importance of this chip in the first paragraph. The average Wikipedia reader would have no idea this chip is central to the development of the computers in their lives.)   As well as I know it, like with many inventions, the time was ripe for it.  If not intel, someone else would have done it soon enough. Society tends to miss this, for example, in the case of the telephone and incandescent lamp. Well, without the 4004, we might be using descendants of the 6800 and 68000, instead of ones that can trace back through the 4004, 8008, 8080, 8086. Gah4 (talk) 01:02, 10 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  ''(stated importance of this chip in the first paragraph. The average Wikipedia reader would have no idea this chip is central to the development of the computers in their lives.)'' 

message: How true is the Tadashi Sasaki thing anyways? As far as we know Ted Hoff came up with the idea of the microprocessor but Sasaki seems to imply in this interview (https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Tadashi_Sasaki) that he trasmitted the idea a unnamed woman had (feels wrong to not recognice the woman to begin with if it were true) to Robert Noyce in 1968, what's weirder is that he implies that he accepted the opinion of the majority that formed the brainstorming session at the time, wich he says was a mistake. So did he heard the idea, found it nice, but not nice enough to consider it but then trasmitted the idea to Intel. Feels a weird sequence of events, and more so when the busicoin schemes after all that were completely divorced from that woman's ideas. I think or there is something badly translated, he is lying, comfused or the original story of the 4004 needs a retelling. Mirad1000 (talk) 21:49, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tadashi Sasaki involvement 

message: In Talk:Microprocessor#Intel_4004/TMS1802NC_Dispute there is discussion about which one was first. The 4004 is better known as being commercially available, though the 8008 was more available. Gah4 (talk) 02:34, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  first