Is microprocessor an integrated circuit???

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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Yes, the 11/780 cpu was a microprocessor. Who on earth came up with micro sized processor? Why not micro stereotypical processor?

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no, the first commercially sold IC microprocessor was the 4004, but there was one built for a dumb terminal that predates it. Bit slice are microprocessors, why wouldnt they be?

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You will want to revise the last sentence.

The instruction units were hard wired with... microprogramming. The instruction is fetched and what happens? it references a memory inside the cpu, a processor within a processor running micro code

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This is simply not accurate. Microprocessors typically operate with instruction and data fetch modes. When an instruction fetch takes place, the op code causes a branch to an internal memory of the internal cpu state machine, running on an internal clock. This sets off a process where the data portion of the instruction or subsequent fetches or registers are used to manipulate data, or they set some status within the cpu state machine

There is no simple hardwired logic, there is a stored program, a "microprogram" within the cpu that will "crack" the instruction like a walnut and see whats inside and eat it if its fresh.

Microinstructions can be 100 bits wide, or for an 8-bit? I dont recall maybe something like 43 bits wide, it depends.

When there is a micro engine, using micro instructions, stored in microcode memory, its a micro processor. There is a clock, internal microcode address generator, next address logic, mux. Can you name any 8 bit cpu that uses only hard wired logic??

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The system would be a "minicomputer" some want to say its a mainframe. But I specifically wrote that the 11/780 "CPU" was a microprocessor because it executes an internal stored microcode processor

Well okay, if you say the definition is micro sized processor, then it depends on your definition of what the word IS is.

Its a definition that I thought wasnt challenged, micro programmed processor

Hey cool, Im going to learn something new, I like to learn. Even though we have an arbitrary definition going, where microprocessor might also mean "purple monkey dishwasher"

PLEASE show an example of a microprocessor that doesnt use microcode

If Im wrong, Ill take back what I said

I know there are "processors" that are mechanical, but strictly a microprocessor

Broadly speaking, it depends whether the microprocessor is RISC or CISC: RISC (Reduced Instruction Set) processors don't use microcode - they have "hard-wired" logic; CISC (Complex Instruction Set) processors generally do have microcode. The exact definitions of RISC and CISC are somewhat contentious. The 6502, which is often said to be the first RISC processor, was not microcoded.

Can you show links? drawings/pdfs or ?

The original Alpha risc? or which?

ummmm ummm let me guess without the ontext I've got to assume that this is a comment about Canadian bee keepers developing an new breed called the "Can Bee".. Am I right?

You must be thinking about the special ones for encription. Discrete components are better for keeping secrets.

No, it means that the bipolars and the mosfets go to school together on the same data bus.

You forgot to mension that this smaller processor has an even smaller on inside it and so on all the way down to a single atom. At least this is how the Russians make them.

To be more specific, some Reduced Instruction Set Computers (RISC) gain a great deal of speed at the cost of removing certain instuctions. The French have just introduced on that takes this to the limit. The NISC (No Intruction Set Computer) has no instructions and is as a result infinitely fast.

In article , Bradley1234 wrote: [...]

Specifically not true in the 4004, 4040, CD1802, or Z80.

are integrated circuits, meaning the components have been built onto one circuit

instructions are processed by referencing internal memory locations and there is a processor within a processor.

instruction set gives developers methods to move/control data, but some uPs are specific and have a limited/specific instruction set

The stored program computer has been standard since the Edvac, but the advantage of the Edvac was one of programming speed, not physical size. The word "microprocessor" entered the language when Intel introduced the 4004 in 1971. That the word "micro" means "small" demonstrates that the term "microprocessor" was never meant to be a retroactice one. After all, to refer to a room-sized computer as being "small" would seem, well, rather humorous, one would think, in this age of the personal computer.

The 6502 was never RISC.

It's only after RISC came along that some people thought it just meant "few instructions" and then decided the 6502 fit that definition.

The 6502 wasn't particularly different from the 6800, or for that matter the 8080.

Micahel

As far as I always understood it, and all definitions I've read, the word "microprocessor" literally means "small processor", and what makes it small is the fact that it is on a single IC chip, as opposed to the word "processor" which is any processor, small or large (ie. integrated circuit or discrete circuit).

It was the step in technology to have an IC contain the complete processor on a single chip that coined the term "microprocessor". The next comparable step along the same path in technology of putting more of the computer on one chip is "SoC" (system-on-chip). If you think of it, SoC brought into existence the idea of processor cores that can be integrated with other components of the computer that originally had their own chips, just like the microprocessor integrated the groups of logic gates which each had their own chip before. We are slowly making the IC chip contain more and more of the system.

Interestingly, the orginal poster (Yogesh) who started this thread never posted again. :-) He probably decided we're all a bunch of loonies for what we did with his simple question, and thought it's better to stay away from us. Either that, or you fell for his trick, he's probably sitting back laughing right now. :-) I think I don't need to ask anyone to correct me if I'm wrong. :-)

Don't mean to dwell on it, but I just came across this and thought it's worth posting. It's from the first page of "Computer Architecture: A Quantiative Approach" (Hennessy & Patterson), which incidentally I am reading these days. I guess this is THE reference about microprocessors, if any book is.

The late 1970s saw the emergence of the microprocessor. The ability of the microprocessor to ride the improvements in integrated circuit technology more closely than the less integrated mainframes and minicomputers led to a higher rate of improvement-roughly 35% growth per year in performance. This growth rate, combined with the cost advantages of a mass-produced microprocessor, led to an increasing fraction of the computer business being based on microprocessors.

Doesn't explicitly give a definition, but I guess it's obvious that the emphasis here is on IC technology, rather than any paradigm of the internal design.

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Yes, there are claims; and I would say the word "microcode" is used loosely in some of them - not all.

I would say a processor is "microcoded" if it has a microprogram counter. Not all state machines are microcoded. The green area in the

The original MOS Technology hardware manual for the 65xx series only mentions a T state register which counts: T0, T1, T2 e.t.c Also, the behaviour of the 6502 when presented with undocumented opcodes suggests it is not microcoded.

I'm still inclined to believe the 6502 is hard-wired, albeit with less certainty than before. I would love to know for sure. I wonder if Chuck Peddle responds to e-mail? Alegedly, he works for

Maybe a SISC (Single Instruction Set Computer) with just NOP or HLT?

It appears you have two separate computer-related ideas mixed together, which is pretty understandable since they both use the word 'micro.' If I recall my computer history, microprogramming (instructions controlling a CPU by the instruction addressing a wide ROM [or RAM] whose outputs activate various parts of the CPU) was done many years before the first microprocesor (a CPU on a single silicon chip) was made. If there's a correlation between these two, it's probably negative: I understand many of the larger mainframe CPU's use microprogramming, and smaller microprocessors use hard-wired logic exclusively.

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Hmm.. this is interesting.

I found this at:

(The same Dave Patterson of the book I quoted above).

The word "microprocessor" was used before the 4004 to mean the processor in a microprogrammed computer by some people of the time, so it's not shocking to see the word microprocessor in a document of that era. I kind of used the term ambiguously, but it was a single chip CPU.

So it seems the word can take both meanings, depending on what era you are talking about. :-)

Well, no offense, but 2005 - 30 = 1975 > 1972 (the year of the 4004 processor), so maybe you weren't around before the change of meaning. ;-)