The first general-purpose processor of the modern age came off the line today in 1971 to power a calculator. It changed the world. Our team tests, rates, and reviews more than 1,500 products each year ...

In 1958 the integrated circuit was developed by a young engineer at Texas Instruments named Jack St. Clair Kilby. He put together a few transistors and capacitors, linking them with a thin layer of ...

NPR turned 50 this year. And to celebrate, we're marking some of the big events of 1971. If you're listening to this on a smartphone or on the internet or in a car full of computer chips, that is only ...

Thirty years ago, on June 8, 1978, Intel Corp. introduced its first 16-bit microprocessor, the 8086, with a splashy ad heralding “the dawn of a new era.” Overblown? Sure, but also prophetic. While the ...

When the microprocessor and inexpensive ROM memory arrived in the early 1970s, building small, stored-program computing systems became practical. System designers learned that with the rapidly growing ...

Intel (INTC) has lost its historic leadership in semiconductors, struggling with declining margins, market share, and ...

A microprocessor incorporates most or all of the functions of a central processing unit (CPU) on a single integrated circuit (IC). The first microprocessors emerged in the early 1970s and were used ...

Cache prefetching is what allows processors to have data and/or instructions ready for use in a fast local cache rather than having to wait for a fetch request to trickle through to system RAM and ...