The Importance of Cpu's

-John von Neumann

John von Neumann, born December 28, 1903 was a Hungarian mathematician who made important contributions to computer science, von Neumann is best known for his EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) which opposed the not yet released ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). Neumann's EDVAC design was intended to resolve many of the problems created by the ENIAC's design. The ENIAC was designed to operate in decimal, whereas the EDVAC was designed to work in binary. These specific types of computers had to be physically rewired in order to perform different tasks. These machines are often referred to as "fixed-program computers," since they had to be physically reconfigured in order to run a different program. Since the term "CPU" is generally defined as a software (computer program) execution device, the earliest devices that could rightly be called CPU's came with the advent of the stored-program computer.

- Moore's Law

Gordon E. Moore, a co-founder of Intel Corporation, devised an empiric observation that the complexity of integrated circuits, with respect to minimum component cost, doubles every 24 months. Moore's original as found in his publication "Cramming more components onto integrated circuits"

The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year ... Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase. Over the longer term, the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least 10 years. That means by 1975, the number of components per integrated circuit for minimum cost will be 65,000. I believe that such a large circuit can be built on a single wafer. - Electronics Magazine 19 April, 1965

Gordon Moore's observation was not named a "law" by himself, that honor goes to Caltech professor, VLSI (Very-large-scale integration) pioneer, and entrepreneur Carver Mead.

- Intel Corporation

Founded in 1968 by Gordon E. Moore and Robert Noyce as Integrated Electronics Corporation, originally it was intended to go by the name of "Moore Noyce" however, this sounded remarkably similar to "more noise" which is an ill-suited name for an electronics company. They went by the name of NM Electronics for almost one year until finally switching to Intel, the name was already owned by a hotel chain, so they had to buy the rights to that name at the beginning. Intel is a U.S.-based multinational corporation that is best known for designing and manufacturing microprocessors and specialized integrated circuits. Intel also makes network cards, motherboard chipsets, components and other devices. Intel is widely known as fabricating the first microprocessor; this CPU dubbed the Intel 4004 was originally intended for a Japanese company Busicom, to replace a number of products already produced by them. However, the 4004 was introduced to the mass market on November 15, 1971. The microprocessor did not become the core of Intel's business until the mid-1980. Today, Intel's microprocessors are commonplace with the Pentium 4, Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, Pentium D and, Pentium Extreme Edition. However, in mid-January of 2006 Intel decided to drop the Pentium name in favor of it's new mainstream moniker(s) Core Solo and Core Duo and the soon to be released Core 2 Solo and Duo.

- AMD Incorporated

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc founded in 1968 in Sunnyvale, California, by a group of defectors from Fairchild Semiconductor, also known as the Traitorous Eight, which also included Jerry Sanders. Amongst the Traitorous Eight was Intel's co-founders Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce. AMD began as a producer of logic chips in 1969, and then entered the RAM (Random Access Memory) chip business in 1975. In February 1982, AMD signed a contract with Intel, becoming a second-source manufacturer of the 8086 and 8088 processors, both of which were 16-bit microprocessors and gave rise to the x86 architecture. For majority of AMD's initial existence they were clone manufacturers of already popular Intel microprocessors. The Intel parts sold more than the AMD clones, their processors were largely popular with OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer), but again, they were only clones. Cloning Intel's products would prove to be a less viable strategy for them seeing as how they'd always be one step behind Intel by using their technology. AMD's first completely in house processor was the K5, which belatedly launched in 1995, it was intended to directly compete with Intel's Pentium line of microprocessors which had been released two years prior. Architecturally, the K5 had more in common with the Pentium Pro (P6) than the Pentium, decoding x86 instructions into micro-ops and executing them on a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) core. However, there were a number of problems with the K5 and it couldn't match the performance of 6x86's integer performance, nor could it match the Pentium's FPU (Floating Point Unit) performance. However the K5 can be accredited from not suffering compatibility problems that the 6x86 suffered from, nor did it run as hot. These problems would continue to plague AMD until the K7.

In 1996, AMD purchased NexGen, this acquisition would prove to have saved AMD in the long run, which is ironic especially considering NexGen was founded by ex-Intel employees. It was evident by now that if AMD wanted to survive, they had to change their game plan, a strategy that would utilize meaningful industry relationships, allowing AMD to compete with Intel on a more equal technological footing. In August of 1999, AMD released the Athlon processor. The Athlon had an advanced micro-architecture geared towards overall performance, with a powerful FPU. When compared to the P6 the Athlon was superior, early samples of the K7 had branch predictor problems as well as low clock rates. When it finally shipped with all architectural fixes and with an amazing (for the time) 650MHz clock speed it shocked the industry. AMD is best known for their Athlon, Opteron, Sempron, and Duron lines of x86-compatible microprocessors.

- X86

This is the generic name of a microprocessor architecture first developed by Intel. The architecture has been called x86 because the earliest processors in this family were identified by model numbers ending in the sequence "86": such as the 8086, the 80186, the 80286, the 386, and the 486. However, this is not a trademark designation for