WEBVTT 00:00:00.360 --> 00:00:03.880 Let's begin today's video at the beginning 00:00:03.880 --> 00:00:08.460 by talking about the Intel 8086. Released on June 8th, 1978, 00:00:08.460 --> 00:00:11.480 it wasn't Intel's first CPU. 00:00:11.480 --> 00:00:16.360 That distinction goes to the 4004, but the 8086 was the front runner of the CPU 00:00:16.360 --> 00:00:19.520 that sits inside your desktop or laptop PC right now, 00:00:19.520 --> 00:00:22.640 unless you want a Mac, a newer Mac anyway. 00:00:22.640 --> 00:00:25.880 You see the 8086 introduced the x86 architecture, 00:00:25.880 --> 00:00:29.080 the dominant design scheme for the past 40-ish years 00:00:29.080 --> 00:00:33.320 that underpinned almost every consumer CPU from Intel to AMD. 00:00:33.320 --> 00:00:36.880 Now that could be shifting nowadays with the growth of non-x86 designs 00:00:36.880 --> 00:00:41.640 like Apple's new M1 chip, but x86 still dominates the PC market, 00:00:41.640 --> 00:00:46.800 and it all started with the 8086. Of course, it originally only ran at a clock speed 00:00:46.800 --> 00:00:52.720 of five megahertz, which is about 1,000 times slower than a modern CPU before you even consider 00:00:52.720 --> 00:00:55.760 like all the architectural improvements since then. 00:00:55.760 --> 00:00:58.840 But nonetheless, the x86 architecture became a mainstay, 00:00:58.840 --> 00:01:05.040 the large part because the original IBM PC used the Intel 8088, a slightly modified 8086 00:01:05.040 --> 00:01:09.360 that IBM was able to get in large quantities for a relatively low price. 00:01:09.360 --> 00:01:13.720 As the IBM PC became an industry standard, the x86 architecture took off 00:01:13.720 --> 00:01:18.480 and was eventually licensed out to other chip makers, including AMD. 00:01:18.480 --> 00:01:22.960 Speaking of AMD, let's move on to our next featured CPU, 00:01:22.960 --> 00:01:26.700 the AMD Athlon 64. Although it was Intel that created 00:01:26.700 --> 00:01:32.460 the original 16-bit x86 architecture and refined it into a 32-bit platform, 00:01:32.460 --> 00:01:36.460 AMD was the first to develop a 64-bit version of x86, 00:01:36.460 --> 00:01:39.500 which they released for the consumer market in 2003. 00:01:39.500 --> 00:01:45.100 Athlon 64 was quite ahead of its time, considering that in 2003, Windows XP ruled the world, 00:01:45.100 --> 00:01:50.980 and most people were still using 32-bit platforms. However, 64-bit computing quickly became popular 00:01:50.980 --> 00:01:54.820 toward the end of the 2000s, which was very important as it allowed systems 00:01:54.820 --> 00:01:59.700 to access more than four gigabytes of memory at once without trickery. 00:01:59.700 --> 00:02:03.060 With even low-ran systems today, typically having at least eight gigs of RAM, 00:02:03.060 --> 00:02:08.060 staying on 32-bit platforms would seriously hamper the experience for many users. 00:02:08.060 --> 00:02:12.340 Athlon 64 was still on the shelves until 2009, but during that time, 00:02:12.340 --> 00:02:17.660 another big-time innovation came onto the scene that was just as important as the transition to 64-bit. 00:02:17.660 --> 00:02:22.660 I'm talking about dual-core processing, and we're actually gonna mention two chips in this section, 00:02:22.660 --> 00:02:27.020 the Intel Pentium Xtreme 840, which came out in April 2005, 00:02:27.020 --> 00:02:31.300 and the AMD Athlon 64X2, which debuted the next month. 00:02:31.300 --> 00:02:35.100 The Xtreme Edition 840 actually wasn't even that complicated of a design. 00:02:35.100 --> 00:02:40.260 It was really just two Xeon cores from Intel's server lineup, just mashed onto one chip, 00:02:40.260 --> 00:02:43.100 or glued together, as you might call them. 00:02:44.100 --> 00:02:49.460 AMD, meanwhile, was a little bit more forward-thinking, as the Athlon 64X2 had a direct link 00:02:49.460 --> 00:02:53.680 between its two cores to speed things up, where Intel cores had to pass information 00:02:53.680 --> 00:02:57.560 through the front-side bus in order to coordinate their activity. 00:02:57.560 --> 00:03:02.040 Whoa, that's bafflingly slow, trust me. AMD's offering also had the advantages 00:03:02.040 --> 00:03:05.600 of being more power-efficient, and it didn't even need a brand-new motherboard. 00:03:05.600 --> 00:03:10.960 It could just work on existing boards with a BIOS update, so Team Red, or Green back then, 00:03:10.960 --> 00:03:14.320 was actually ahead of Team Blue in the multi-core CPU game for a while, 00:03:14.320 --> 00:03:17.640 even though Intel pulled way ahead in the market share a few years later. 00:03:17.640 --> 00:03:21.800 But we'd be remiss if we only talked about desktop and laptop CPUs. 00:03:21.800 --> 00:03:25.920 What about the chips that live inside of our phones? These were developed very incrementally, 00:03:25.920 --> 00:03:31.640 but arguably the most important one was the ARM Cortex-A8, released in 2005. 00:03:31.640 --> 00:03:34.680 Now, the Cortex-A8 isn't just one chip. 00:03:34.680 --> 00:03:40.480 ARM doesn't actually manufacture chips, but rather they license out the designs to third parties. 00:03:40.480 --> 00:03:44.040 Although the Cortex-A8 was far from ARM's first chip, 00:03:44.040 --> 00:03:48.240 it was probably the first that became broadly popular in consumer gadgets. 00:03:48.240 --> 00:03:53.640 Cortex-A8 cores were featured in the first ever Samsung Exynos mobile CPU, as well as the Apple A4, 00:03:53.640 --> 00:03:59.480 which powered the iPhone 4 and the original iPad. Cortex-A8 also featured super-scaler technology, 00:03:59.480 --> 00:04:03.480 meaning it could execute more than one instruction per clock cycle, as well as a branch predictor 00:04:03.480 --> 00:04:06.880 that was much more advanced than preceding designs. 00:04:06.880 --> 00:04:10.480 The cement that the chip could anticipate system needs ahead of time more effectively, 00:04:10.480 --> 00:04:15.760 representing a significantly forward in performance. Although ARM chips were already popular on smartphones, 00:04:15.760 --> 00:04:20.040 the A8 really cemented ARM's design as a go-to for mobile devices. 00:04:20.040 --> 00:04:24.920 As subsequent Cortex models enabled many of the features we've come to expect on modern smartphones, 00:04:24.920 --> 00:04:30.000 as well as performance that has closed the gap significantly between PCs and mobile devices. 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:33.720 In 2005, there were fewer than two billion ARM-based chips sold. 00:04:33.720 --> 00:04:37.400 This jumped to over 21 billion in the year 2017. 00:04:37.400 --> 00:04:40.480 Of course, there are plenty of notable chips that we didn't have time to cover today, 00:04:40.480 --> 00:04:44.640 so let us know down in the comments which ones you'd like to see in a future episode. 00:04:44.640 --> 00:04:47.840 Maybe we'll get to do those a little bit later on. 00:04:47.840 --> 00:04:52.520 Thanks for watching this Techquickie. Like, dislike, and maybe check out our other videos. 00:04:52.520 --> 00:04:57.280 Comment with some video suggestions, as I said before, and don't forget to subscribe and follow.