Federico Faggin

Federico Faggin

Microprocessor concept and architecture—Ted Hoff was the first to recognize that Intel's new silicon-gated MOS technology might make a single-chip CPU possible if a sufficiently simple architecture could be developed. He developed such an architecture with just over 2000 transistors. In 1969, Japanese calculator manufacturer, Busicom, accepted Hoff's (Intel's) proposal for alternate architecture in which a single-chip general-purpose computer central processor (CPU) would be programmed to perform most calculator functions. Further refinements in architecture and logic design by Faggin and Mazor led to development of first working CPU in February 1971, which had as much computing power as the room-filling ENIAC (1946), and the introduction of the Intel 4004 microprocessor in November 1971. (1996)