Re: 11 most influential microprocessors of all time

[Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca>]

On Wed, 2 Sep 2009, mdj wrote:

> On Sep 3, 3:49 am, Ken Gagne <kga...@gamebits.net> wrote:
>
> > What do you think of the hardware PC World chose and how they
> > presented it?  Would you have chosen differently?
>
> I would have :-)
>
> To me, 'most influential' is a toss up between the Z80 and the 6502.
> Why? Both of them entered an existing market and delivered the right
> product and most importantly at the right price. The 8080 and 6800
> where both too expensive to ignite the microcomputer revolution that
> the Z80 and 6502 did.
That's sort of revisionist.  The 8080 was cheap enough in late 1974 to be 
put in the Altair 8800.  Where it was expensive was in single quantities.
I remember reading that some people bought the Altair 8800 merely for
the CPU, since for $375 or whatever the Altair went for, it was cheaper
than buying the 8080 in single quantities.

Note the price had dropped by the fall of 1975 so that Godbout sold
it, a clock generator, some RAM and some ROM for about fifty dollars.
That coincides with the introduction of the 6502, which was standout
because out of the gate the single quantity price was $20.  It wasn't
necessarily cheaper than the other CPUs, but you could buy one for $20,
which got it into hobbyist hands, which of course then caused it
to be used in the Apple I because Steve Wozniak had designed his hobby
computer with it since he could get one so cheap.

If there hadn't been an Altair 8800, it's not clear to what extent
others would have wanted their own computer.  Thus the 8080, and perhaps 
even the 8008, set off the "microcomputer revolution", even if it was a 
small revolution at the time.  The revolution wasn't that more people
got home computers, the revolution was that suddenly people could get
a real computer without spending a lot or having a huge surplus computer
in their living room.  Later CPUs "sped up the revolution" but if you
place the cause of the revolution on the 6502, then that's dwarfed by the
IBM PC and the Mac that dwarfed what came before.

Those CPUs weren't developed to be "computers".  They were developed
and introduced to be controllers, to replace a whole board of logic.
It was only when they got out of the gate that people started to build
"computers" as we know it.

For a company designing a traffic light controller, the cost of a CPU
wasn't a factor because while it would cost a lot to get a single
one for testing, the magnitude of the production run ensured that the
price was competitive with all the logic it replaced.

Yes, CPUs like the 6502 made it into a fair number of home computers,
but they were also being used as embedded controllers and continued as 
16bit CPUs took over the home computer market.  That means they
were innovative in themselves, whether or not people actually knew
that such and such a CPU was in their toaster or whatever. A successful
as some of the early home computers were, their run was still likely
smaller than the embedded controller applications.

  Michael