-
The first working integrated circuit was developed by Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor and Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments. The first IC was demonstrated on September 12, 1958. (Geoffrey Dummer is credited as being the first person to conceptualize and build a prototype of the integrated circuit.)
-
IBM developed the first automatic mass-production facility for transistors in New York in 1960.
-
On April 19, 1965, Gordon Moore made an observation about integrated circuits that became known as Moore's Law.
-
Intel Corporation was founded by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore in 1968.
-
AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) was founded on May 1, 1969.
-
Intel with the help of Ted Hoff introduced the first microprocessor, the Intel 4004 on November 15, 1971. The 4004 had 2,300 transistors, performed 60,000 OPS (operations per second), addressed 640 bytes of memory, and cost $200.00.
-
Intel introduced the 8008 processor on April 1, 1972.
-
Intel's improved microprocessor chip was introduced on April 1, 1974; the 8080 became a standard in the computer industry.
-
Intel introduced the 8085 processor in March 1976.
-
The Intel 8086 was introduced on June 8, 1976.
-
The Intel 8088 was released on June 1, 1979.
-
The Motorola 68000, a 16/32-bit processor was released and was later chosen as the processor for the Apple Macintosh and Amiga computers.
-
The Intel 80286 was introduced on February 1, 1982.
-
Intel introduced the first 80386 in October 1985.
-
The SPARC processor was first introduced by Sun.
-
Intel 80386SX was introduced in 1988.
-
Cyrix released their first coprocessors, the FasMath 83D87 and 83S87, in 1989. These were x87 compatible and designed for 386 computers. The FasMath coprocessors were up to 50% faster than the Intel 80387 processor.