Intel announced the first commercially successful microprocessor, the 4004, in late 1971. By 1974 Intel had introduced four microprocessors: the 4-bit, “low-end” 4004 and the upgraded 4040, and the 8-bit 8008 and 8080. Intel’s 4-bit 4004 and 4040 microprocessors were used primarily for embedded control applications where I/O capabilities and performance and lower part cost outweighed the superior processing performance of 8-bit devices. However, Intel no longer had the microprocessor market to itself. Several other semiconductor vendors had introduced competing microprocessors by 1974, notably the 4-bit Rockwell PPS4, the 8-bit Motorola 6800, the multichip Fairchild F8, and National Semiconductor’s 16-bit, multichip IMP-16. Toshiba had … Read More → "A History of Early Microcontrollers, Part 4: The Intel 8048 and 8748"

As with many first-of-a-kind devices, the Texas Instruments (TI) TMS0100 calculator chip family was a narrowly defined microcontroller, mostly good for making calculators. However, the first chip in the TMS0100 family, originally called the TM1802NC and later renamed the TMS0102, incorporated everything a microcontroller requires to be a microcontroller: a CPU, RAM, ROM, and I/O. Granted, it was a specialized microcontroller. Its I/O was application-specific and designed to be attached to a matrix keyboard and a seven-segment display. Nevertheless, the TMS1802NC was a microcontroller.

Originally conceived … Read More → "A History of Early Microcontrollers, Part 2: The Texas instruments TMS1000"

Gary Boone, who worked in the Texas Instruments (TI) MOS Department, devised the first chip that can be called a microcontroller because he was becoming bored with his job and in trouble with his family. He’d joined TI in 1969 just when calculator chips were getting to be big business. During the 1960s, electronic calculators replaced the electromechanical Marchant and Frieden calculators that had owned the market for decades. Semiconductors made it possible to replace the hundreds of intricate metal and plastic parts in these electromechanical calculators, first with hundreds of transistors and diodes, and then … Read More → "A History of Early Microcontrollers, Part 1: Calculator Chips Came First"