From our front-page news:
Although the first patents for transistors happened long before December 16, 1947, it was William Shockley of Bell Labs who first delivered the first efficient transistor with the help of a few colleagues. To say it has come a long way would be a massive understatement. In a release yesterday, Intel reiterated the fact that they kick ass with transistors, a fact proven with the help of their recent 45nm processors.
To put the size into perspective, and to borrow from our review of the QX9650 3.0GHz Quad-Core, the new 45nm QC CPUs include over 820 million transistors. Not impressed? How about another comparison - 2,000 45nm transistors could fit along the span of a human hair... and 30,000,000 on the head of a pin. Impressive... yes. Mind-boggling... yes.
While on the Intel scheme of things, Gizmodo has posted a quick overview of all Intel processors from 1971 to 2007.
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SANTA CLARA, Calif., Dec. 10, 2007 - Intel Corporation on Dec. 16 celebrates the 60th anniversary of the transistor, the building block of today's digital world. Invented by Bell Labs and considered one of the most important inventions of the 20th century, transistors are found in many consumer electronics and are the fundamental component used to build computer chips, or the "brains" of the personal computer (PC).
Source: Intel Press Release
To put the size into perspective, and to borrow from our review of the QX9650 3.0GHz Quad-Core, the new 45nm QC CPUs include over 820 million transistors. Not impressed? How about another comparison - 2,000 45nm transistors could fit along the span of a human hair... and 30,000,000 on the head of a pin. Impressive... yes. Mind-boggling... yes.
While on the Intel scheme of things, Gizmodo has posted a quick overview of all Intel processors from 1971 to 2007.
<table align="center"><tbody><tr><td>
</td></tr></tbody></table>
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Dec. 10, 2007 - Intel Corporation on Dec. 16 celebrates the 60th anniversary of the transistor, the building block of today's digital world. Invented by Bell Labs and considered one of the most important inventions of the 20th century, transistors are found in many consumer electronics and are the fundamental component used to build computer chips, or the "brains" of the personal computer (PC).
Source: Intel Press Release
Even buying my first one with money I earned from my news paper route...................