The evolution of humans, and especially the pace of it, has been the "talk of the town" but in the computing segment, we have achieved a lot in just five decades.
From NVIDIA's High-End AI Processors to Intel's 4004 Chip, The Computing World Grew Massively In Fifty Years
Well, this is a post I haven't done before, but it's likely one that shows humanity how far ahead they have come. This reminds me of the Kardashev scale, which is all about civilization's level of technological advancement. Based on the facts I'll discuss ahead, it seems like we humans might rank at a decent position. When you combine the likes of Moore's Law with all the advancements made by computing firms throughout the past fifty years, you get an end result in the form of current-gen chips, which outperform the very first computing solution by a whopping "millions" in multiples.
Have you ever wondered how the demand for computing emerged in the early times? If you don't, well, we did have calculations back then as well, through tools like abacuses and mechanical calculators. However, the need for having a quicker system particularly emerged from within the US government, when they needed to store census data in the late 19th century, which ultimately gave birth to "punch-card" systems. Anyways, let's fast-forward to late 20th century, we saw Intel's first microprocessor, the 4004, that hit the markets, and it was a marvel.
The Intel 4004 chip wasn't exactly a market-oriented solution. Rather, it was a chip designed by Team Blue for the Japanese company Busicom. It would've acted as a chip for a printer calculator, but Intel saw an opportunity and dug right into it. The 4004 was pushed out by 1974, and in terms of specifications, it offered a 4-bit CPU, 740kHz clock speed, and about 92,600 IPS. For memory, it featured 4KB ROM and 640 bytes RAM, and when you compare these numbers to modern-day requirements, they look negligible.
Well, after the 4004, we saw a computing revolution catalyzed by factors such as parallel computing, multi-threaded environment, and, more importantly, Moore's Law. Combine fifty years of research and development, and after the Intel 4004, you get NVIDIA's Blackwell AI chip. Now, the Blackwell generation isn't exactly the complete representation of NVIDIA's computing capabilities, since Team Green has released several lineups, that have evolved over time. But in terms of popularity, Blackwell is one of the more famous options.
While we have seen a gigantic rise in power consumption, the parallel increase of performance capabilities is simply astonishing. Like Jensen says, Blackwell will power the next industrial revolution, and more importantly, direct us to a world where computing capabilities witness a phenomenal rise over a multi-decade period.
About the author: Muhammad Zuhair is a hardware and technology reporter for Wccftech, specializing in the semiconductor industry and the complex interplay between technology, manufacturing, and geopolitics. His coverage focuses on the corporate strategies and technological roadmaps of industry giants like TSMC, NVIDIA, Samsung, and Intel. Zuhair's expertise lies in deconstructing complex topics such as fabrication nodes (e.g., 2nm process), the economic impact of policies like the CHIPS Act, and the strategic development of AI infrastructure from NVIDIA, AMD and Intel.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
