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[email protected] (J. Bayko) Date: 12 Jun 92 18:49:18 GMT Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.arch Subject: Great Microprocessors of the Past and Present I had planned to submit an updated version of the Great Microprocessor list after I’d completed adding new processors, checked out little bits, and so on... That was going to take a while... But then I got to thinking of all the people stuck with the origional error-riddled version. All these poor people who’d kept it, or perhaps placed in in an FTP site, or even - using it for reference??! In good conscience, I decided I can’t leave that erratic old version lying out there, where people might think it’s accurate. So here is an interim release. There will be more to it later - the 320xx will be included eventually, for example. But at least this has been debugged greatly. Enjoy... John Bayko. — Great Microprocessors of the Past and Present (V 3.2.1) Section One: Before the Great Dark Cloud. ————————— Part I: The Intel 4004 (1972) The first single chip CPU was the Intel 4004, a 4-bit processor meant for a calculator. It processed data in 4 bits, but its instructions were 8 bits long. Internally, it featured four 12 bit(?) registers which acted as an internal evaluation stack. The Stack Pointer pointed to one of these registers, not a memory location (only CALL and RET instructions operated on the Stack Pointer). There were also sixteen 4-bit (or eight 8-bit) general purpose registers The 4004 had 46 instructions.