Revision as of 23:48, 23 December 2015

MCS-4
The entire MCS-4 chipset: 4001, 4002, 4003, and 4004.
Developer	[[designer::Intel]]
Manufacturer	[[manufacturer::Intel]]
Release date	November 15, 1971
Architecture	4-bit
Process	[[process::10μm]]
Clock	740 kHz

The MCS-4 or 4000 Series or Busicom Chip Set was a family of 4-bit microprocessor chipsets. The chipset, which was made of four individual chips included the 4004 CPU, the first commercial microprocessor. MCS-4 was completed by March 1971, entered production in June, and introduced into the market on November 15, 1971.

History

An ad for the 4004 in the Nov. 15, 1971 issue of Electronic News

Before Federico Faggin joined Intel in 1970, the development of the 4004 was stall and dreadful. Federico developed several design innovations at Intel that made it possible to fit the microprocessor in one chip, including new methodology for random logic chip design using silicon gate technology^[1]. Faggin developed the 4004 testing tool, chip and logic design concurrently with the layout of all the chips of the entire MCS-4 system.

In November of 1971, a memory chip manufacturer by the name of Intel publicly announced the world's first single chip microprocessor, in the Nov. 15 issue of Electronic News. The prophetic ad read: "Announcing a new era in integrated electronics". The chip was designed by Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff and Masatoshi Shima; it received U.S. Patent #3,821,715. The original 4004 chips were shipped in a 16-pin ceramic DIP.

Components

The MCS-4 can be minimally functioning with just the 4001 ROM and the 4004 CPU, however its designed to be fully functioning with RAM and shift register.additionally two more chips, the 4008 and 4009 to expand the system to work with any of Intel's existing memory chip selections.

References

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