First Microprocessor – 50th Anniversary 2020
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The First Microprocessor website commemorates the 50th anniversary of the first microprocessor, launched in 2020. The site likely contains historical information and resources about this significant technological milestone.
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Nov 14, 2025 at 3:53 PM EST
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As Ken's article cited below details, none of these chips were really "invented". The designs, or very close to the same design already existed in SSI or MSI implementation. So nobody was inventing anything here. It was more a case of "can you make me one of these on a chip?" If anything was invented it was the idea that you could sell a discrete CPU component to many customers. Until then most system builders rolled their own CPU. That said the minicomputer market existed as a precursor. Those were often used in "embedded systems".
> In my view, the key features of a microprocessor are that it provides a CPU on a single chip (including ALU, control functions, and registers such as a program counter) and that it is programmable.
Which means that, pioneering as it was, this wasn’t a microprocessor.
Ken’s post is terrific btw for an overview of the candidates for the title of first microprocessor.
[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-surprising-story-of-the-first-...