Happy Birthday to You!!!

Wow, I never knew!  Today is a very momentous day in the field of technology.  The very first single-chip microprocessor was introduced on this day 40 years ago!  The chip - the 4004 was a 4 bit chip running a slug's pace of 740khz and it had programmable memory of...4 K.

I'm sure that a lot of you like "big whoop", but this is the "Adam" to just about anything with a processor, from your cellphone to your car, your microwave, everything.

To give some context on how far technology has gone in the past 40 years, the current processor would run at maybe 4.0ghz.  Comparing this to the 740khz of the 4004 is like comparing thousands to billions.  Quite a difference.

For me though, it's the memory.  To have 4,000 characters of memory available - I just can't fathom that compared to the capacity of a modern processor.

I very badly want to fast forward 40 MORE years and see how technology has increased exponentially!

"The sheer number of advances in the next 40 years will equal or surpass all of the innovative activity that has taken place over the last 10,000 years of human history," said Justin Rattner, Intel chief technology officer, in a written statement.  

I'm not sure if this statement excites me, or scares the beejesus out of me - probably a bit of both!