The microprocessor
An entire computer processor fits on one chip.
- When
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
Intel releases the 4004 in 1971, developed for a Japanese calculator company and containing 2,300 transistors. Putting the processor on a single chip makes computers cheap enough to embed in anything. Modern equivalents hold tens of billions of transistors with features measured in a few nanometres, manufactured by a supply chain concentrated in a handful of facilities — a strategic vulnerability now shaping geopolitics.