In just half a century, humanity has gone from processors capable of executing tens of thousands of instructions per second to chips that run trillions. This rapid evolution, akin to a quiet technological revolution, has transformed the world—from the humble beginnings of the Intel 4004 to modern giants like NVIDIA Blackwell, the core of today’s artificial intelligence era.
The birth of an era: Intel 4004
In 1971, Intel, in collaboration with the Japanese company Busicom, launched the world’s first commercial microprocessor: the Intel 4004. This 4-bit chip, operating at a clock speed of just 740 kHz and capable of executing 92,600 instructions per second (IPS), was initially designed for a desktop calculator.
With only 4 KB of ROM memory and 640 bytes of RAM, it seemed modest even by the standards of the 1980s. But the 4004 marked a turning point—it paved the way for programmable, versatile, miniature computers. Thus began the unstoppable race to increase computational power.
Moore was right
Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, famously postulated that the number of transistors in a chip would double approximately every two years. Although today its exact applicability is debated, this trend has served as a compass for decades. Thanks to this trajectory, combined with innovations in architecture, parallel systems, multi-core designs, and graphics processing, we’ve seen an exponential leap that has increased computing capacity by 217 million times since the 4004.
From golden silicon to green silicon: the leap to Blackwell
NVIDIA, an undisputed leader in artificial intelligence hardware, has taken this progress to a new dimension with its Blackwell architecture. These chips are designed to handle massive loads for deep learning, complex physical simulations, and generative AI tasks on an unprecedented scale.
While the exact number of instructions per second varies depending on configuration, Blackwell easily surpasses 20 petaFLOPS (20 quadrillion operations per second) in FP8 AI applications. Compared to the 92,600 IPS of the Intel 4004, the leap is not only staggering but revelatory: it’s about purpose. Whereas the 4004 was a sequential processor, Blackwell is engineered for extreme parallel computing, optimized for deep neural networks and energy efficiency.
A world governed by computing
The evolution has not been purely technological. Computing has shifted from a niche discipline for scientists and military projects to an omnipresent pillar of modern life—from smartphones and language models to autonomous vehicles and biotechnology.
As Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, remarked during the Blackwell launch: “We are at a new industrial revolution, and its engine is artificial intelligence.” In this revolution, chips are no longer just calculation tools but the foundations of an entire economic, scientific, and social ecosystem.
What lies ahead
Historically, 50 years is nothing. Yet, the technological gap between 1971 and 2025 seems even wider than that between the Bronze Age and the Industrial Revolution. If the current pace continues, upcoming quantum or neuromorphic processors may make Blackwell seem primitive.
The story of computing is fundamentally a human story—one of vision, ingenuity, and ambition. If, in 1971, a whole room was needed for what now fits on a fingernail-sized chip, how far will we go in the next 50 years? The answer may not lie solely in silicon but in the intelligence we are learning to build.
via: wccftech