Ted Hoff (1937-Present)
The invention of the microprocessor labeled a turning point in Intel's history. This evolution altered not just the future of the company, but a great deal of the industrial world. As a researcher for the Intel Co, who were formulating an integrated circuit for a Japanese producer of desk-top calculators, Ted Hoff designed the computer-on-a-chip microprocessor, which arrived on the market as the Intel 4004, beginning the microcomputer industry.
Dr. Marcian Edward Ted Hoff, Jr. was born in Rochester, New York on 28 October 1937. Hoff became fascinated with science as a child, and references his interest in electronics to a subscription to Popular Science he received from his uncle when he was 12. He went to school at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as an undergraduate, and on his summer breaks, worked for Rochester's General Railway Company, where he acquired his first two patents. After earning his bachelors degree in electrical engineering in 1958, he accepted a National Science Foundation Fellowship to attend Stanford University, where he earned an MS and a PhD in 1959 and 1962, respectively, both in electrical engineering. He remained on to study at Stanford for an additional four years directing research on neural networks and integrated circuits.
Prior to the conception of the microprocessor, computers used to claim acre-sized rooms. Different integrated circuit chips were required for every application a computer executed. The comparatively affordable and compact central control systems we know today did not exist until Ted Hoff invented the microprocessor.
The story of the microprocessor actually began in the late 1950s, as two computer experts, Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce, learned that great numbers of transistors and their connections could be etched onto a piece of silicon. However, these initial chips had one significant failing -- they were hardwired, meaning they could only execute jobs they were originally designed for. Hoff's breakthrough was to contrive a set of chips that acted together to execute a device's routines. He determined that if a chip was fashioned to consort formal computer programs on its own -- to act as a Central Processing Unit (CPU) -- processing power could be made a great deal more flexible. Hoff produced a chip little enough and affordable enough to fit into virtually any device, making computers, cameras, calculators and scores of other conveniences and machines able to "think."
The story of this scientific breakthrough started in 1969, when a Japanese calculator manufacturer called Busicomp asked Intel to design a set of chips for a class of programmable calculators. Marcian "Ted" Hoff, a youthful and "very brilliant ex-Stanford research associate" who had joined Intel as employee number 12, was assigned this project. However, he didn't like the Japanese plan calling for 12 customized chips - each of them representing a different task. Hoff believed designing so many different chips would cause the calculators to be as costly as minicomputers such as DEC's PDP-8, although they could only be used for calculations. The CPU Hoff had in mind was the size of a thumbnail and held 2,300 transistors. In spite of its small size, Hoff's CPU possessed the same computing power as computers that cost thousands of dollars more with CPUs the size of a large desk. His thought was to produce a four-chip set with a general-purpose system of logic device as its center, which could be programmed by instructions stored on a semiconductor unit memory chip. This was the theory behind the first microprocessor.
With the assistance of new employee Stan Mazor, Hoff perfected the design of what would comprise the 4004 arithmetic chip. After Busicomp had accepted Hoff's chip set, Frederico Faggin, among the best chip design experts, who had been employed recently, set out transforming the design into silicon. The 4004 microprocessor, a 4-bit chip (processes 4 bits - a string of four ones or zeroes - of data at once), contained 2300 MOS transistors, and was as powerful as the legendary original electronic computer, ENIAC.
Realizing the potential of the mighty new invention, Intel purchased back the design and merchandising rights to the chip from Busicom for $60,000 and nicknamed it the Intel 4004, which it officially announced in November of 1971. Hoff, Faggin, and Mazor continued to hone their microprocessor, and were engaged in its 2nd and 3rd versions, the Intel 8008 and Intel 8080. In 1980, Hoff became the first Intel Fellow, the company s loftiest technical post. He departed Intel in the early 1980s to take a position with Atari as Vice President of Technology.
Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1996 for his invention of the microprocessor concept and computer architecture, Hoff is presently the Vice President and Technical Officer of Teklicon, Inc. His numerous awards include the Stuart Ballantine Medal from the Franklin Institute.
We couldn't enjoy using the High Speed Internet or our modern personal computers without the critical invention of the microprocessor by Ted Hoff.