Single chip computer

Die image of an Intel 8085A, a single chip computer

an 8085 single chip computer is mounted within this Dual in-line package from 1976.

In the 1970s, as integrated circuit manufacturers were able to fit larger numbers of transistors onto a single chip, single chip computers were introduced, by Intel, Motorola, and their competitors. These chips would have a full, but small, set of control and data registers, and circuitry to decode and execute instructions.

The Intel 4004, which registered only four bits wide, is the lineal ancestor of Intel's Pentium microprocessor. The Intel 4004, and its rivals, used only a few thousand transistors. By 1993, when the first computers in the Pentium family were introduced, single chip computers incorporated millions of transistors.