Introduction

The modern era of devices be it the devices used in education, our home, to our offices, to industrial automation, transportation, medicine, or in defence etc are all microprocessor or microcontroller based systems. The most common of the is the desktop or the laptop are microprocessor based systems.

A microprocessor is an electronics programmable device that accepts the user input from memory or peripherals, processes it as per the instructions fetched from the memory and produces the result that can be stored back in memory or fed as input to other devices or applications.

The word microprocessor is made from two words micro and processor. Until 1960 all systems were made using discrete components which lead to very large and complex design, consume large amount of power, bulky and slow. It was only after the 1970s that the integration level in ICs increased to larger extent and thanks to the VLSI technology that the ICs size decreased with increase in the component count on them thus making the size of the end products quite smaller.. This was used to miniaturize the ICs and hence the word micro and of course we are talking about the processing device. These two words put together become the “microprocessor”. The microprocessor operates on binary numbers and understands the binary or so called the machine language.

Operation codes or in short “OPCODE” define the operation to be carried out on the binary operands. The opcodes are also supplied to the microprocessor in the language understood by it and that is the machine language. The codes are generally written in human readable words called mnemonics and the converted to machine code by software called assembler or hand coded by the programmer.

Microprocessor based system:

A microprocessor IC consist of the ALU, register sets, instruction decoder, a timing and control units and some basic components for clock generation. Figure-1 shows a microcontroller based system.

Figure-1 consist of a CPU (generally a microprocessor), memory and other peripheral such as I/O units. CPU(Central Processing Unit) or also called as the microprocessor is the brain of the whole system all interfaced using the system external bus. The bus is the set of conductors used to carry address, data or control information and accordingly called as address bus, data bus and control bus. It does all arithmetic, logical operations and other operations as per the instructions supplied to it. It contains a set of registers such as general purpose registers, memory pointers, accumulators etc used during an operation. The instruction are decoded and necessary timing and control signals are generated to synchronize and control the operations performed by different units. The memory is the primary and the secondary memory used to communicate with microprocessor and fetching and storing the instructions and the operands. The I/O are for allowing the user or human to interact with the system for example a keyboard allows user to type and send the operands or information to the microprocessor, a monitor for example allows us to view the output which may be in text, graphic or audio, video output.

Evolution of Microprocessors:

The evolution can be seen not from the era of invention of IC, but way back to 500 BC when abacus was invented in middle east and was the fastest calculating device until in middle of 17^th century. This was followed by the invention of mechanical calculator that could add subtract, made up of gear wheel etc by Blaise Pascal in 1642 to help his father in tax-calculation. In 1971, Gottfried Wilhem Leibniz came up with an advanced version of this mechanical calculator, this could work faster than Pascal’s calculator and could be used for multiplication, division and square root etc. He also invented binary codes that could be used to represent any decimal number in binary code using only two digits a ‘0’ and a ‘1’.

George Boole, used the idea of Leibnitz and 1954 invented a new branch of mathematics called Boolean algebra. This field of mathematics is used in computers for decision making and doing arithmetic and logical operations on string of zeros and ones.

The mechanical era of computation was followed by the vacuum tubes, this was a revolution and led to the design of ENIAC (Enhances numeric integrator and calculator), it was made using around 17468 vacuum tubes. It was very huge in size and very unreliable and had a very short life as in 1950 brought to halt caused by a short circuit.

An alternate to vacuum tubes were the transistor invented in 1947 by three physicists working at Bell Telephone Laboratories (Bell Labs). John Bardeen(1908–1991), Walter Brattain (1902–1987), and William Shockley (1910–1989). They thought that transistors made from semiconductor material like germanium and silicon could be better alternatives to vacuum tubes. Robert Noyce (1927–1990) and research chemist Gordon Moore after separation from William Shockley formed their own company Fairchild and started working why not to make common circuitry using number of transistors. This idea led to the invention of Monolithic Integrated Circuit in 1960. Soon the scientist started working on large and very large scale integration. With the ide of integration in mind Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore established their own company integrated electronics and became popular by INTEL. They came up with the idea of a system on a chip and this was the time that the microprocessor came into existence. The microprocessor also have no a long history so they can be better described as generation of microprocessors.

Generation of Microprocessors

The electronic industry at this time was fully ripe. The pace with which work on microprocessor was going on was very high. Lot of companies jumped in the race of manufacturing the single chip microprocessors. The number of microprocessors can better be described in various somewhat overlapping periods called generations and is described below.

First Generation of Microprocessor (1971 – 73)

Intel came up with its first 4-bit microprocessor called Intel-4004 in 1971. Soon Intel came up with an enhanced version of 4004 called Intel 4040. Other companies such as Rockwell international introduced PPS-4, Toshiba also introduced its 4-bit microprocessor T3472. This era was dominated by 4-bit processors though 8-bit microprocessors such a microprocessor based on PMOS technology as Intel 8008 in 1972 and Intel 8080 in 1973 using NMOS technology

Second Generation Microprocessors (1974-78):

This era was dominated by 8-bit microprocessors such as Intel 8085 in 1975. This processor was an enhanced version of Intel 8080 required only a single power source of 5V and operated at 2MHz clock frequency. This is a very popular series of microprocessors used in universities for laboratory works. Some other popular microprocessors in this era were Motorola MC6800, MC6806, Zilog Z-80 and Z-800; MOS technology 6500 and National semiconductor introduced NSC-800.

Third Generation Microprocessors (1979-81):

The third generation was dominated by 16-bit microprocessors. Intel introduced 8086 as its first 16-bit microprocessor. Other processors were Intel 8088 which had external 8-bit data bus but an internal 16-bit data path. Other 16-bit microprocessor by Intel were 80186 and 80286. Motorola introduced 68000,68010; Zilog introduced its Z8000; Texa’s instruments introduced its 16-bit TMS-9900. Intersil and Toshibas introduced their 12-bit microprocessors. Intel 8088 was very popular and was used in cheap personnel computers.

Fourth Generation Microprocessors (1982-95):

This ear was of the 32-bit microprocessors. Intel introduced its 32-bit processors as Intel 386, Intel-486. They were widely used in desktop computers. Motorola 68020, 68030 and 768040 were also popular in desktop computers.

Fifth and beyond generation microprocessor(1996 to present):

This is dominated 64-bit microprocessor era and less dominant 32-bit processors which were popular during the transition phase. Though literature also define higher generation as 6^th, 7^th, 8^th generation but we restrict our discussion t fifth and higher generation covering all processors built till date. Some examples being the microprocessors of this era are SUN’s ULTRSPARK, PowerPC 620, MIPS, R4000, Intel PA8000, Intel i860 and the latest core series processors as i3, i5, i7 microprocessors.

AMD Vs Intel microprocessors

Intel

• Atom
• Celeron
• Pentium
• Core (m3, i3, i5, i7, i9,x)
• xeon

AMD

• Athlon
• Ryzen(3,5,7,9)
• Ryzen Threadripper
• Athlon PRO
• Ryzen Pro
• EYPC

As you can see range of Intel and AMD microprocessor is pretty complicated, Each chip is available in lot of  of different models

Key Specification

Key specifications include clock speed, core count, multithreading, and cache

Clock speed:

it is measure in MHz, GHz, higher the value of the clock speed more instructions a CPU can execute per second. Higher the clock speed the better the CPU. Today, most CPU have  a base clock speed, as well as turbo/ boost frequency

Core Count-

It indicates how many individual processing units a CPU contains, and hence how many tasks – or threads – it can execute at the same time. So more the core a CPU has more is its potential performance.

Multithreading-

Core are further enhanced to allow virtualization. It allows each core to run more than one thread at the same time. Intel multithreading is called ‘hyper-threading’ whereas AMD multithreading is called ‘simultaneous multithreading’ or (SMT). Usually multithreading double the thread count so that for example a quad core CPU can execute eight threads simultaneously.

Cache-

It is a fast memory to enhanced performance. They come in three categories as- level 1(fastest), Level 2 and level 3 as the slowest. Modern CPU come with some amount of Level-1 caches plus large quantities of Level 2 and Level 3

Intel Vs AMD

Intel	AMD
Intel atom CPU – are  Low energy processors used for tables, phones, IoT, edge computing and micro servers. Most atom chips are embedded, there are not much powerful. However atom P5962B are used for network base stations and has 24 cores and 27MB cache	AM Athlon are used for lower-cost computers, they are available in Silver and Bronze – just like the Intel Pentium CPUs. The clock speed of some of the latest AMD Athlon CPUs are base frequency of 3.5GHz and come up to 4 cores and 6MB cache
Intel Celeron and Pentiums- Intended for lower cost computers, Pentium silver optimized for low cost, Pentium Gold Optimized for performance. Current Celeron come with 3.5GHz up to 4 cores and 4MB cache. Current Pentium come with 4.2GHz with 4 cores, and up to 6MB cache	Athlon PRO and Ryzen Pro are used as workstations and offer higher quality than consumer CPUs, lower warranties and improved security
Intel Core CPU Cores Type Cores Base Clock   speed GHz Max cache MB M3 2 1.1 4 I3 5 4.0 8 I5 6 4.1 12 I7 8 4.0 16 I9 10 3.7 20 x 18 3.8 20.75	AMD Ryzen CPUs Ryzen Type Cores Base Clock speed GHz Max cache MB 3 4 3.8 18 5 6 3.7 35 7 8 3.8 36 9 16 3.7 72 Ryzen Threadripper 64 2.9 292
Intel Xeon- Are for servers and high end workstations. E series is for entry level servers and Xeon W for workstations. We can use Xeon Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze in multi-CPU systems. By spring 2021 the most powerful Xeon Platinum 9282 had 56 cores, 2.6GHz base clock (boost 3.8) and 77 MB cache	A MD’s EYPC family of CPUs are for servers and are scalable like Intel’s Xeon family

 

Reference from TechTators videos #Evolution of AMD microprocessors
Year	Model	Base Frequency	Bit	core	transistors	Nm technology
1975	AMD Am9080	– 2-4MHz	8	Single	4500	6000nm
1982	Am8086	5-10MHz	16	single	29000	3000nm
1984	Am286	6-20MHz	16	Single	134000	1500nm
1991	Am386	20-40MHz	32	single	275000	1500 – 800nm
1993	Am486	33-120MHz	32	single	1.2 billion	700 – 350nm
1995	Am5x86	133-150MHz	32	single	1.6 billion	350nm
1996	AMD-K5th: K5 (Kriptonite) AMD’s first x86 processor	75-133MHz	32	single	4.3billion	50-350nm
1997	AMD K5 PR200	166-300MHz	32	single	8.8 billion	350-250nm
1998	K6-2	166-550MHz	32	single	9.3 billion	250-180nm
1999	AMD K6-III	350-550MHz	32	single	21.3 billion	250-180nm
2000	Duron	600MHz-1.8GHz	32	single	37.2 Million	180-130nm
2003	Opteron	1.4-3.5GHz	64	1 to 16	114-904 million	130-28nm
2004	Sempron	1-2.9GHz	1,2 or 4	37.2-103.1million		130-28nm
2005	Turion	1.6 – 2.7GHz	64	1 or 2	114 – 153.8 million	90 – 45 nm
2007	Phenom	1.8 – 2.6GHz	64	3 or 4	450 million	65
2009	Phelon-II	2.4 – 3.7 GHz	64	2,3,4 or 6	758 million	45nm
2011	FX series	2.8 – 5 GHz	64	4,6 or 8	1.6 billion	32 – 28 nm
2017	Ryzen	3.1 – 3.7 GHz	64	2 or 4	4.95 billion	14-12nm
2017	Ryzen5	3.1 – 3.8GHz	64	4 or 6	5.99 billion	14-7
2017	Ryzen7	2.8 – 3.9GHz	64	8	5.99 billion	14-7
2017	EYPC	2 – 3.2 GHz	64	8 to 64	39.54 billion	14-7
2017	Rizen Threadrippen	3 – 3.8	64	8 to 32	23.54 billion	14-7
2019	Ryzen 9	3.1 – 3.8	64	12 to 16	9.89 billion	7

Watch the video : AMD vs Intel  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcxNdXnahOM