Last edited 04/06/2003 <Facilitate Home>
The below helps put into perspective the onward rush of technology...typically computers are replaced every 3 years.
The above observation made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, was that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented. Moore predicted that this trend would continue for the foreseeable future. In subsequent years, the pace slowed down a bit, but data density has doubled approximately every 18 months, and this is the current definition of Moore's Law, which Moore himself has blessed. Most experts, including Moore himself, expect Moore's Law to hold for at least another two decades.
1971 - Intel 4004 processor. 2,300 transistors. 108KHz.
1972 - Intel 8008 processor. 3,500 transistors. 200KHz.
1974 - Intel 8080 processor. 6,000 transistors. 2MHz.
1978 - Intel
1982 - Intel 286 processor. 134,000
transistors.
1985 - Intel 386 processor. 275,000
transistors.
1989 - Intel 486 DX CPU processor. 1.2 million
transistors.
1993 - March 22 - Intel Pentium released. At the time it was only available in 60 & 66 MHz versions which achieved up to 100 MIP's, with over 3.1 million transistors.
1993 October 10- Intel Release the 75 MHz version of the Pentium Processor.
1994 March 7 - Intel release the 90 and 100 MHz versions of the Pentium processor
1995 March 27 - Intel release the 120 MHz version of the Pentium processor.
1995 June 1 - Intel release the 133 MHz version of the Pentium processor.
1996 January 4 - Intel release the 150 & 166 MHz versions of the Pentium Processor. They contain the equivalent of over 3.3 million transistors.
1996 October 6 - Intel release the 200 MHz version of the Pentium Processor.
1997 January 8 - Intel released Pentium MMX (originally 166 and 200 MHz versions), for games and multimedia enhancement.
1997 June 2 - Intel release the 233 MHz Pentium MMX.
1997 May 7 - Intel Release their Pentium II processor (233, 266 and 300 MHz versions). It featured, as well as an increased instruction set, a much larger on-chip cache.
1998 - February - Intel released of 333 MHz Pentium II processor. Code-named Deschutes these processors use the new 0.25 micro manufacturing process to run faster and generate less heat than before.
999 - Intel Celeron Processor. Developing processors for specific market segments, the Intel Celeron processor is designed for the value PC market segment. Number of Transistors: First product generation had 7.5 million, second generation had 19 million and today's Celeron processor at 1.1GHz has 27, with the 1.2GHz version having 44 million transistors. Speed: First generation at 266MHz. Today the range is from 500MHz to 1.10GHz
1999 - Intel Pentium III Processor The Pentium III processor has circuit line widths of 0.25 microns. If the circuit lines were wide enough to walk through, the chip would cover almost 660 square miles, an area about 34 times the size of the city of Santa Clara, Calif. It features 70 new instructions--Internet Streaming SIMD extensions--that dramatically enhance the performance of advanced imaging, 3D, streaming audio, video and speech recognition applications. Number of Transistors:9.5 million Speed:650MHz to 1.2GHz.
2000 March 8 - Intel release very limited supplies of the 1GHz Pentium III chip.
2000 20th November - Intel Pentium 4 @ 1400 & 1500 MHz.
2001 3rd January - Intel Pentium 4 @ 1300 MHz.
2001 23rd April - Intel Pentium 4 @ 1700 MHz.
2001 2nd July - Intel Pentium 4 @ 1600 & 1800 MHz.
2001 27th August - Intel Pentium 4 @ 1900 & 2000 MHz.
2002 7th January - Intel Pentium 4 @ 1600A, 1800A, 2000A, 2200 MHz.
2002 2nd April - Intel Pentium 4 @ 2400 MHz.
2002 6th May - Intel Pentium 4 @ 2266, 2400B, 2533 MHz.
2002 26th August - Intel Pentium 4 @ 2500, 2600, 2666, 2800 MHz.
2002 14th November - Intel Pentium 4 @ 3066 MHz, with HyperThreading (HT) Technology.
A resource that looks like it is constantly updated for further information: http://www.tom.womack.net/x86FAQ/faq_time.html