1.3 ADVANCES IN PROCESSING TECHNOLOGY

It is worth remembering that the cheapest laptop or desk PC nowadays has in excess of a thousand million storage locations, a gigabyte (1GB) compared to the 64,000 of twenty or so years ago. In still earlier decades, values of 4,000 (4 KB) were common, calling upon great programmer ingenuity to carry out tasks, which are very restricted in comparison with modern applications. This great leap in storage capacity can be traced back to the introduction of the 'integrated circuit' (IC), a device that brings together in one miniaturized form separate electronic components such as transistors, capacitors and resistors.

The first IC dates back to 1959 and its design is credited to Jack Kilby, who was working at Texas Instruments at that time. It used the semiconducting material germanium; a few months later, Robert Noyce developed a chip at Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation based upon silicon, which is a better semiconductor and which resolved issues in making external connections to the device. Noyce went on to become the cofounder of Intel Corporation, initially a producer of memory storage chips. However, the year 1971 saw Intel beginning to move away from memory devices with the development of the first chip having processing capacity. The 4004 was first in a long line of 'microprocessors'—the heart of systems as diverse as industrial plant controllers, vehicle engine management, cellphones and domestic washing machines.

A small percentage of the total annual production of 'microchips' can be found running programs in general purpose computing systems, such as desktops and laptops. These frequently now have dual or quad 'cores'—in effect, two or four central processing units (cpu's) on a single chip; a major manufacturer in early 2010 announced a postage-stamp-sized chip containing 48 such cores.