The Complete History of the Home Microprocessor

Hi all! Thanks for watching the video :) If you're feeling generous and would like to support my work, you can do so via Patreon (link in description) or using the 'Thanks' button underneath the video :) and if you're interested, check out the trailer for the next retro computing documentary on my channel! This project took 6 months to complete and was huge fun to make! If you enjoyed the video(s) then don't forget to subscribe, like, and share the video on social media! It really does make a difference when trying to grow a small channel. Thanks again everyone :) -Archie

I'm an ASIC designer, i worked on Motorola MC68000 design. What your video fails to mention and is worthy of mention, is the ever constant fight between hardware and software. In the 60s,70,80s software developers needed to develop code within CPU constraints. (and memory). Then we saw software drive hardware... that is to say, if you wanted to play the latest games you needed to spend megabucks on the latest PC hardware. Then, a switch back around 2000 to chips being far superior and software not truly making full use of muticore threading. And now, we see CPUs evolution limited by foundries. Its now that we will see software start to drive innovation in CPUs

This brought back some vivid memories. I was 7 years old in 1979 when our elementary school library got it's first PCs. A pair of Apple II with the green monochrome displays. I joined an after-school class teaching BASIC 2.0 programming, the built-in programming environment that was part of the Apple II ROM. I recall settling on a Death Star related project for my program, as any sane 7 year old would have. I asked the teacher "How do you make a circle?" and his eyes lit up. He was being asked to explain Pi to a 7 year old and he was delighted.

This is a great long form documentary on the history of CPU development. Very interesting and fun to watch, especially for a guy who is old enough to have seen it all (and work with most of it) as it played out. Thanks Archie! Well done!

How the hell do this only have 1434 views and this channel only have 711 subscribers at the time of writing, is beyond me. Very reminiscent of RetroAhoy, and I mean that in best possible way. Keep doing content like this, and look into optimizing for the YouTube algorithm, most obvious thing you might be missing is a decent video description, you are not giving YouTube anything to work with there, stick a synopsis of the video in there, to hit a lot more of the juicy keywords - this video should be sitting at at least 100000 views or even way more by now, in my opinion.

This is a truly great exploration and documentary of the history of computing. As a child of the 70s I was already aware of lot of new technologies that emerged around that time. Home gaming with PONG, VHS machines and dedicated handheld single game machines. I was aware of the huge cost around 1980 of the PC. I played games in arcades in pre teen years until I received a Spectrum 48k and everything changed and to this day I'm a tech head.. I'm watching this now and I have learnt even more from it thank you.

I can't believe I just watched a feature length video about microchips...but you know what - I enjoyed every second of it!

I'm a mechanical engineering student who has a few friends who know WAY too much about computers. I've been slowly trying to learn but this has been tremendously useful in that goal! You explain things very well to someone who barely knows anything about computers. Well done! And thank you

I was 16 in 1980 and lived through the developement of the home micro and then the PC. I can relate to this video with great fondness having had the ZX81, BBC Electron and its add ons, BBC Micro, Atari STe. Buying my first PC in 97 (IBM Aptiva) and then building my own.... Its been fun watching this video bringing back great memories. Thanks for your hard work Archie...👌

This is great. Well done. It must have taken a very long time to narrate and animate. This is one of the best summaries of the microprocessor boom of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and beyond.

Fantastic video! As I was watching it, memories came back from all the computers I've had during my lifetime. From Sinclair, the commodore, the first IBM with DOS to the servers and PCs I'm still building to this day for customers.

Itanium wasn’t a RISC design, it was what’s known as a VLIW (very large instruction word) processor. It also relied on the compiler to optimise for concurrent operations (so, for example, while an arithmetic operation was in progress the compiler was expected to work out other steps that the CPU could handle that didn’t depend on the result), but compiler technology wasn’t really up to the task.

This is spectacullarly comprehensive and relevant. I'm blown away. I only have one small quibble: During the 80s and 90s the presentation focuses on low cost solutions, while the 2000s focuses on high end x86. This leaves out mips and arm powered tablet computers, and SBCs like the raspberry pi. And they are relevant, especially arm powered SBCs. A new cycle was attempted to drive down cost with the netbook and tablet craze, but the software wasn't there yet, there just wasn't enough incentive to push Android as a new universal OS for home computers, and it wasn't suited to replace wintel. The raspberry pi, and linux distros ported to it, is the new platform.

Nice history! My first computer in high school was a single Commodore PET for the entire school, when I went to University I saved my pennies to buy my very own Sinclair ZX-81. What a beast. I recall the Pentium 4 years, and Intel's strange relationship with RAMBUS memory, with all the technical and legal issues that it came with.

Great content! Love it! Did you know IBM wasn't the company that introduced Intel's 386 architecture with their PS/2 Systems? It was Compaq that beat Big Blue by 7 months with their very expensive high-end Deskpro 386, released in september 1986 vs the IBM PS/2 Model 80 which used the same 80386DX-16, released in April 1987. I think Compaq deserves to be mentioned in documentaries like these as it shaped computing history or at least had a vast influence on its development in the sense that the company played a key role in creating open standards which hugely benefitted/influenced the PC (clone) industry, being the quintessential PC clone manufacturer..

I don't normally watch videos longer than about 30 minutes, but this was worth every second of it. Most of it was a great trip down Memory Lane for me; I was born in 1960. Outstanding job!

My heart went all a-flutter at 28:00 when the Amiga was shown. Great video, fast pace but so thorough!

This may be nearly a year old but it's still absolutely brilliant. Thank you for putting it together!

The Encarta cameo brought back some flash back memories. What a time to be alive. I am happy to see what the world looked like before mainstream Personal Computers. I think computers have really revolutionized humanity in many different ways, for better and for worse.

Thank you for this. I'm 63. For half of my adult life I kept this documentary in my head but my brain clicked off when we stopped calling them Pentium. At least now I know how to intelligently shop for a computer again. Your level of research is impressive. V well done.