Who developed the worlds first microprocessor?
A microprocessor is generally defined to be a single-chip central processing unit (CPU). To earn the name, a microprocessor does not have to include the program memory (e.g. ROM) data memory (RAM), or peripheral interfaces (e.g. serial ports), but many modern microprocessors include all of these. The Intel 4004 is widely considered to be the world’s first microprocessor. Wary of spurious lawsuits, Intel makes no such bold claims, but there is no doubt that the 4004 was the first customer-programmable microprocessor to reach the commercial market. You simply could not buy anything like it before its introduction on November 15, 1971. To be fair, during the 1970-1971 period of Intel’s 4004 development, Texas Instruments (TI) was also working on 4-bit CPU-on-a-chip technology for use in their line of calculator products. Regardless of who might have achieved “first silicon,” there was a key difference between Intel’s and TI’s efforts. Although TI was developing a chip that contained all t
