Así han evolucionado los microprocesadores a lo largo de su historia....
El microprocesador es el corazón de la computadora personal. Observe cómo han cambiado los microprocesadores a lo largo del tiempo nos da una idea bastante clara de cómo ha evolucionado la informática.
La Universidad de Stanford ha creado una base de datos de todos los microprocesadores que han salido al mercado desde 1970 hasta ahora; Para cada microprocesador se ha escrito una ficha bastante completa, lo que permite comparar diferentes modelos y ver cómo ha evolucionado la tecnología a lo largo de los años.
En concreto, la comparación que vamos a realizar es entre las distintas generaciones de procesadores Intel, desde el Intel 4004 (El primer microprocesador de la historia) hasta el I7 980X (El último modelo lanzado en el momento de escribir estas líneas). Esta comparativa, además de mostrarnos cómo han evolucionado los microprocesadores de esta firma, también nos servirá para ver cómo han evolucionado los PC.
ModeloAñoTran.Tran. / Mm2W.Procesadores 8 bits, was prior to the PC400419712.3001920,5800819723.5002191,0808019746.0003000,8Procesadores bits8086197929.0008791,7802861982134.0002.8513,3Procesadores PC 16 PC 32 bits80386DX1986275.0002.6701,780486DX19891.200.00014.8153 , 0Pentium19933.200.00010.88413,0Pentium II19977.500.00036.94612,0Pentium III199928.000.000264.15116,0Pentium 4200042.000.000193.54852,0Pentium 4 P.2004169.000.0001.251.852115,0Procesadores PC 2 núcleosCore 2 Duo2006291.000.0002.034.96565,0Procesadores 4-Core PC ProcessorCore i7 N.2008774.000.0002.614.86545.0Core i7 SB2011995.000.0004.606.48195.06-Core PC ProcessorCore i7 980X20111.170.000.0004.717.742130.0
The column "Tran." indicates the number of transistors contained in the processor, the "Tran./mm2″ column the number of transistors per square millimeter and the "W" column the power consumption in watts. In the table I have put a processor of each generation and the ones that are repeated is because Intel has used the same name on several different generations of CPUs. One of the models that appears repeatedly is the "Pentium 4″, which corresponds to the Pentium 4 Willamette, the first model that came out, and the "Pentium 4 P." which corresponds to the Pentium 4 Prescott; the Prescott has the not insignificant honor of being the first processor with more than a million transistors per square millimeter.
The other name that appears repeatedly is the Core i7, of which there are three versions: The "Core i7 N.", which corresponds to the Nehalem, the "Core i7 S.B." which corresponds to the Sandy Bridge and the "Core i7 980X", which corresponds to the GulfTown. The Gulftown is a Nehalem modified to incorporate six cores instead of the usual four; the Sandy Bridge, on the other hand, is a totally new architecture. We now turn to analyze the data. The column that must be looked at more closely is the number of transistors, in particular the number per square millimeter, because it is the number that measures the progress of microchip manufacturing technology. If we look at the progression a bit, we see that it is somewhat more irregular than Moore's law predicts; thus, according to Moore's law, the number of transistors in a circuit doubles every 18 months, which means that in a decade it should multiply by approximately 64. Looking at the table, we see:
Between the 4004 (1971) and the 80286 (1982) the total number of transistors has increased by 58 times and the number of transistors per mm2 has increased by 15 times. Between the 80286 and the Pentium (1993), the total number of transistors has increased by 24 times and the number per mm2 has increased by 4 times. Between the Pentium and the Pentium 4 Prescott (2004) the number of transistors has multiplied by 53 and the number per mm2 by 115. The key to this irregularity is in the Pentium, which is a much shorter leap forward than expected. If we compare it with the previous model, the 80486DX, we see that although the total number of transistors does increase significantly, the number per square millimeter decreases; It seems that during the 1990s, Intel fell asleep a bit, although at the end of the decade it began to wake up again; just look at the huge gap between the Pentium II and the Pentium III.
Y por último, sé que faltan algunos procesadores en la mesa, como el Pentium D y los i3 e i5. El Pentium D fue el primer procesador Dual Core de Intel y simplemente constaba de dos Pentium 4 Prescott empaquetados juntos. Intel se vio obligado a lanzar el Pentium D debido al lanzamiento del Opteron de doble núcleo, con el que AMD venció a Intel en la carrera de procesadores multinúcleo. No incluyo el i3 y el i5 porque son procesadores de arquitectura Nehalem, como el i7, pero con algunas modificaciones para abaratarlos.