Many computer designers contend that the falling price and rapidly increasing power of commercial microprocessors offset the advantage of more costly specialized hardware.

The 4004 is, however, still the first commercial microprocessor, and it's the first microprocessor recognized and used at the time as a microprocessor.

Mr. Isaac said that the company would soon merge its layout advance with its material advances to significantly increase the speed of its commercial microprocessors.

Starting in 1968, Ted Hoff and a team at the Intel Corporation invented the first commercial microprocessor, which foreshadowed the personal computer.

Some commercial microprocessors used at this level are:

On November 15, 1971, Intel released the world's first commercial microprocessor, the 4004.

Massively parallel processors are made by chaining together hundreds or thousands of inexpensive commercial microprocessors.

The first major commercial microprocessor developed with SMT was the Alpha 21464 (EV8).

In contrast, today's commercial microprocessors routinely have switching speeds of billions of times per second.

In 1969, Ted Hoff conceived the commercial microprocessor at Intel and thus ignited the development of the personal computer.