Evolution of a computer processor

A processor is the core part of a computer that fetches, computes, and executes instructions and is popularly called a "central processing unit" (CPU). The processor is the hardware architecture of a computer that performs basic arithmetic, logical, control, and input or output (i/o) operations. These instructions are specified by the users sometimes, and there are some predefined programmes that run on their own. These instructions are used to drive the computers.

Briefing the background of computer processors, it all started with the discovery of silicon (Si) by Baron Jons Jackob Berzelius, which is the basic component of the processor. Later, unlike the electrical switches, electronic switches (logic gates) were invented to perform logical operations when one or more binary inputs would produce a single binary output. Later, John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley invented the first transistor at the Bell Laboratories, a semiconductor device which amplifies and switches electrical signals. Later, Geoffrey Dummer conceptualised and prototyped the first ever integrated circuit (IC), while Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby developed and demonstrated the first working integrated circuit (IC). In the year 1968, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore founded the Intel Corporation with the goal of setting up the semiconductor market.

Intel introduced the first ever commercial microprocessor (μprocessor/ μP), the Intel 4004 processor that held 2,300 transistors and was designed by a design engineer, Federico Faggin. Significantly, the microprocessor miniaturised the CPU of a computer, which has replaced the very large machines that could perform calculations earlier into the small machines, and then it was a notable advance in the technology of integrated circuitry.

The below image indicates the evolution of microprocessor.

                                                         Fig 1. The evolution of a μprocessor