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The Intel 8008 was an early microprocessor designed and manufactured by Intel and introduced in April, 1972. The 8008, originally codenamed 1201, was originally commissioned by Computer Terminal Corporation for use in its Datapoint 2200 programmable terminal, but because the chip was delivered late and did not meet CTC's performance goals, the chip was not used in the 2200. An agreement between Intel and CTC permitted Intel to market the chip to other customers. Initial versions of the 8008 ran at 0.5 MHz, later increased to 0.8 MHz. While a little slower in terms of instructions per second than the 4-bit Intel 4004 and Intel 4040, the fact that the 8008 processed data eight bits at a time and could access significantly more RAM actually gave it 3 to 4 times the true processing power of the 4-bit chips. The instruction set of the 8008 and subsequent Intel CISC CPUs were heavily based on CTC's design. The chip (limited by its 18 pin DIP packaging) had a single 8-bit bus and required a significant amount of external support logic. For example, the 14-bit address, which could access 16K bytes of memory, needed to be latched by some of this logic into an external Memory Address Register (MAR). The 8008 could access 8 input ports and 24 output ports. For controller and CRT terminal use this was an acceptable design, but it was too difficult to use for most other tasks. A few early computer designs were based on it, but most would use the later and greatly improved Intel 8080 instead. The 8008 family is also referred to as the MCS-8.
Designers Marcian "Ted" Hoff, Stan Mazor, Hal Feeney, Federico Faggin | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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