Intel 8008

Summary

After the appearance of Intel’s first CPU, the 4004, the company tries to improve its slow memory access. In collaboration with Datapoint, the first 8-bit microprocessor is developed from a total of 3500 transistors. The Intel 8008 CPU has an external 8 bit wide bus, addressed with 14 bit 16 KiB memory and works with a clock rate of 0.5 MHz (later 0.8 MHz).

The processor was released in 1972 at a price of USD 120. That same year, a team led by Bill Pentz at California State University in Sacramento, USA, began building an early microcomputer based on the 8008: the Sac State 8008.

From the following year onwards, some computer manufacturers are slowly interested in the new Intel CPU. This creates the first commercial microcomputers: the 8H from the US company SCELBI, the Micral N from R2E from France and the MCM/70 from Micro Computer Machines from Canada.