Technology :-PIONEERS OF THE MICROPROCESSOR WE SALUTE YOU ALL.

Intel 4004 Microprocessor

Undoubtedly the world became a much better place due to amazing developments at a Startup Company on the West Coast of America from 1969 - 1971.

The effects of this project are still felt in the World Today.

There can be no doubt that we owe a debt of gratitude to Ted Hoff, Frederico Faggin and Stanley Mazor all former employees of the Intel Corporation. With Special thanks to Masatoshi Shima formerly of Busicom.

They embarked on the MCS-4 Project in April 1969.

Frederico Faggin

Frederico Faggin, originally from Italy and who previously had worked at Olivetti was a fresh faced 28 year old who had transferred over recently to work for Intel in Palo Alto. He had been brought in as a Lead Designer to oversee the Design Components of the important Project.

Ted Hoff or Intel employee number 12 was Lead Architect on the MCS-4 Project. He had become the applications research manager at the then memory semiconductor chip making small enterprise, as of 1969. Ted Hoff is commonly referred to as the 'Rock Star of Intel' - a worthy accolade indeed.

The project was only really embarked upon - as a revenue making exercise to keep the company generating revenue until the Memory Chip SemiConductor Market Developed.

Busicom were a prominent Japanese Calculator Company and were seeking a partner company to develop Large Scale Integration Circuits specifically for their Calculators. They had also approached Mostek in New England but ultimately Intel was selected to manufacture the chips.

The customer representative engineer who worked closely with Hoff and Faggin was Masatoshi Shima. He lead a team of enginners from Busicom. Shima actually stayed longer at the Intel manufacturing facility than planned and finally returned to Japan in October 1970 when the project was near completion.

Masatoshi Shima

 

Ted Hoff had a critical role in the whole saga by pursuing a new revolutionary chip design from an architectural standpoint. The actual practical instruction set was worked on by Stanley Mazor.

Hoff was indeed a visionary and Busicom were impressed by this far simpler yet unconventrional design. He and his team spent weeks preparing the block diagrams of the cpu basic architecture and the 4 chip set with associated instructions.


Faggin worked 80 hour weeks to keep the project 'on track' and devised the silicon wafer design.


The Intel 4004 would eventually be born with Great Fanfare and would be commonly known as the ' first computer on a chip'. The working parts were assembled by February 1971.


The 4004 was composed of 2250 transistors and amazingly could perform up to 2000 additions per second.


Calculations were in 4 bit chunks.


The chip had 2048 bit metal mask programmable ROM with a 4 bit programmable input/output port.


It was also composed of self refreshing 320 bit dynamic RAM with 4 bit output.


The revolutionary design of just 4 chips also included one programmable chip , one cpu chip, one ram chip for processing data and one shift register chip for the i/o port.

Haven't processors come a long way since those pioneer days!

The 4004 was made specifically for embedded control units.

Busicom had developed the firmware for the Calculator and chip in February 1971.

March 1971 and both companies were very impressed with the awesome working prototype.

In July 1971 Calculator production started.

Finally Intel announced on November 15th 1971 they would manufacture the 4004.

Swiftly the 8008 processor was released in April 1972 after further development and Intel have never looked back since.

Those exciting developments from 1969 - 1971 have made our lives much easier in 2011.

Health :- Hope for Tinnitus Sufferers Worldwide.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/

Tinnitus is much more serious than a headache for the 50 million Americans and 4.5% of the world's population that have the condition.

There is still much uncertainty about the causes of this condition.

Yet there is no known cure for this problem.

Currently  researchers are working round the clock in their attempts to find a cure.

Hopefully there is hope that  relief is in sight for many of the two million Americans of which tinnitus interferes with their daily life.

It often causes insomnia and panic attacks and other undesirable issues.

People with tinnitus are often unable to deal with their day to day lives and not function as efficiently as they would like in their jobs.

Doctors used to think it was a problem directly with the ear but have now come to the conclusion that is directly related to the brain.

One potential cure is holding an electromagnet to people's brains. It is thought to cure problems with the connections within the brain and cause them to function normally. The magnet - about 6 inches in size is brought closer to the head of the patient during the therapy sessions.

The Defense Department is funding studies into Tinnitus - as a large proportion(40%) of their soldiers who have suffered hearing loss due to Explosions or gunfire in Iraq and Afghanistan have developed tinnitus.

This hearing loss is thought to have caused changes in the brain and these modifications to the brain have caused or are causing Tinnitus perceptions to occur in the sufferer.

The brain is perhaps trying to make up for the fact that there are sounds that the ear no longer hears by compensating with Tinnitus sounds.

The Second Potential cure - uses a technique called Vegas Nerve Stimulation which is also used to treat depression. It  is a technique that  gives a specific nerve within the brain a series of jolts of electricity.
A pacemaker like device is implanted and it generates pulses of electricity in the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is one of the major nerves in the cranium.

But however these are still only 'potential cures' for Tinnitus.

Many people utilise herbal remedies  which are usually composed of  mixtures of Ginkgo Biloba and Hawthorn.

Hawthorn is known to promote better blood circulation, which is often thought to help this.

A known workaround is listening to radiostatic through headphones which can bring comfort and ease to many sufferers.

The key is really to pay no attention to the Tinnitus and still lead a normal life. The people that do this should be wholeheartedly applauded for their bravery in dealing with such a distressing condition.

We look forward to the day when there will be a cure for the condition.