What are some of the most influential and interesting CPUs of all time?

[Nicktheflick]

For my final paper in one of my classes I am writing about the progression of CPU hardware. I am pretty knowledgeable about everything DDR3 and newer but lack a lot of perspective before that. What CPUs, new or old, should I look into for a starting point? What CPUs had a major impact and which ones are particularly interesting (FX-9590)? Thank you for any assistance!

[Godlygamer23]

AMD's older FX CPUs(FX-51 as an example) were pretty incredible for the time compared to what Intel was offering. 

 

A Hexus review from 2004 of the FX-51 for a raytracing benchmark put the FX51(2.2GHz) at 59.73FPS, compared to Intel's P4 running at 3.2GHz(41.17FPS), and 2.4GHz(31.38FPS). This was back when Intel and AMD were both just chasing clock speeds, and there were estimates of the cooling requirements due to this, since neither one made an effort to improve the actual architecture, until AMD stepped up. 

https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/625-amd-athlon64-fx-51/

[Levent]

2600K-2700K-2500K-3770K-3570K

 

If you pretty much built a computer with one of the said CPUs in 2010 to 2012. You were pretty much set for the next 8 years. IPC gains were extremely significant over pre SB architectures.

 

Before that, maybe I could recommend Q6600 from 2007. If you got that in 2007, you were good for a long while.

 

I dont know much about AMDs history to be honest.

[RONOTHAN##]

Nahalem chips like the i7 920. It's the first chip to do integrated memory controllers and was the start of the Intel HEDT platform. Also it was relevant for performance for nearly a decade, but that's more because of the lack of innovation than these chips being particularly excellent. 

[freeagent]

The AMD64 instruction set, while not a CPU, it is something that is active on any 64 bit system running in the mainstream today.

 

So anything that was on s754/940/939 would have brought that to us. I have a soft spot for Sandiego/Toledo cores..

 

Core 2 was awesome, Core i7 was awesome.. pretty much Intel until Zen 2ish? Now its back and forth again.

 

 

[da na]

Core 2 Duo was the start of the modern CPU era - performance/efficiency were far more balanced compared to Pentium 4/K9 architecture, soldered chips in laptops became far more common, and they're still relevant and usable today.

First Core i-series was the next big innovtion because literally nothing has changed system architecture-wise since then, with the northbridge being moved onto the CPU instead of being on the motherboard.

[8tg]

QX9775, an absurdly high end core2 quad meant for the skulltrail platform, dual socket 771 top of the line stuff that was one of the first examples of “HEDT”, specialized products meant to bridge the gap between workstations and enthusiasts. 
 

The Athlon 5350 and kabini APUs on AM1 in general. AM1 was a socketed SoC platform, which we haven’t really seen since, SoC stuff otherwise is always soldered onboard. SoC platforms are where the components normally found in chipsets are instead integrated into the CPU. What this did was make motherboard manufacturing for them extremely cheap, you could buy new AM1 boards for $20. 
There was really nothing stopping AM1 from becoming a forever socket, where AMD could just make new AM1 APUs as they deemed fit to suit that market every generation, since there was no concern over platform compatibility, only the limitations of the physical socket. They did not pursue that since the demand just wasn’t there.

 

The Pentium E6500k is the first cpu to use the K designation to indicate it was meant for overclocking.

i5 L16g7 and the i3 L13g4 are some of the only 5 core x86 CPUs out there. Why? No clue. They’re only found in some really niche ultra books like the thinkpad x1 fold, so it’s not out of the question that they exist for the sole purpose of being weird.

The i7 5775c was a kind of half failed generation? Braswell, the forgotten step between haswell and broadwell. They’re Z97 compatible 1150 CPUs, there’s only two, an i7 and i5, and they have the Iris Pro 6200 igpu which is a substantial step up from haswell offerings. Presumably these failed because of platform limitations, they didn’t want to put the generation on a DDR3 platform and scrapped most of the plans for desktop broadwell, instead focusing on skylake.

[sk8rs_dad]

Zilog Z80, Motorola M6809, and Intel 8088. They made personal computers possible. 

[mariushm]

Maybe you should write a paper about negative effects of corporate greed on computer hardware instead...

 

For example Intel suing others for using names like 486 and then moving to naming chips Pentium because judges decided numbers couldn't be copyrighted.

 

Intel deciding to patent and no longer license cpu sockets to other cpu manufacturers (hence why AMD and others kept using Socket 7, later named Super Socket 7) and why companies like Cyrix were sold to Via and why Via kept releasing cpus on socket 370 (because they had license up to socket 370) and now they make mostly bga cpus, like the ones for laptops.

 

How Intel bribed computer manufacturers to only sell Intel based computers, how AMD won lawsuits for this and Intel was supposed to more than a billion dollars Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. v. Intel Corp. - Wikipedia

 

As for advances, the AMD64 instruction set won over Intel's 64 bit extension for the good of the everyone... Intel was working on IA64 at that time, expensive and slow.. would be worth talking about those first 64 bit consumer processors.

 

Core processors were indeed great, a significant improvement over the Pentium 4 netburst architecture, which was designed to achieve high clocks but was hot and power hungry.  They were also great in laptops.

 

LowSpecGamer on Youtube has a series of videos about ARM, Z80, 6502, etc they're pretty well researched : https://www.youtube.com/@LowSpecGamer/videos

 

[podkall]

25 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Core processors were indeed great, a significant improvement over the Pentium 4 netburst architecture, which was designed to achieve high clocks but was hot and power hungry.  They were also great in laptops.

also apparently (according to what I just skimmed off of Wiki) Pentium 4 was one of the first CPUs to do SMT or Hyper-Threading, which barely increased die area while more greatly increased performance with the only drawback of certain bugs and power draw requirement (though expected for new tech)

[PDifolco]

In the PC prehistory, the 386DX (1986 or so ?) was a breakthrough, like 4x faster than the basic 8086 of the early 80s

[porina]

I presume this is in the context of x86. I'm a bit rusty with the older ones now as it is so long ago.

 

I'd give a nod to 486 as the first to have a FPU included as standard, although cut down versions were also made without.

AMD won the CPU race to 1 GHz. Intel tried to gain marketing credits by released the first post 1 GHz CPU. Unfortunately for them it was shown to be unstable so they cancelled it. You'd have to look up the specific model names.

HT was introduced with Pentium 4. This offered a potential boost for threaded software at a cost of a die area increase of <5%.

There were many SIMD instructions through the years. Today AVX rules, which was introduced with Sandy Bridge. In feature updates, Haswell saw the introduction of FMA units, which do a multiply and add which is common in many applications so gave quite a speedup over doing them separately. Skylake-X (and equivalent server offerings) introduced AVX-512, doubling the FP execution width again and adding new instructions which help the data be in the right place at right time. Note consumer implementations (Tiger Lake, Rocket Lake, Zen 4) don't have the increased execution width, although the other extensions still can help significantly.

 

48 minutes ago, mariushm said:

As for advances, the AMD64 instruction set won over Intel's 64 bit extension for the good of the everyone... Intel was working on IA64 at that time, expensive and slow.. would be worth talking about those first 64 bit consumer processors.

I would argue this point. AMD64 is a very AMD solution. It appears good at first glance but has shortcomings compared to a designed from ground up 64 bit architecture. Having said that, with modern advances a lot of it is mitigated or could be worked around through additional features like those introduced by AVX-512.

[Hinjima]

2 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Nahalem chips like the i7 920. It's the first chip to do integrated memory controllers and was the start of the Intel HEDT platform. Also it was relevant for performance for nearly a decade, but that's more because of the lack of innovation than these chips being particularly excellent. 

I still say that the i7-950 is my favorite CPU of all the CPU's I have owned over the years.
Mine overclocked from 3.06ghz to 3.8ghhz and ran like a dream. What a beast

[starsmine]

3 hours ago, Nicktheflick said:

For my final paper in one of my classes I am writing about the progression of CPU hardware. I am pretty knowledgeable about everything DDR3 and newer but lack a lot of perspective before that. What CPUs, new or old, should I look into for a starting point? What CPUs had a major impact and which ones are particularly interesting (FX-9590)? Thank you for any assistance!

Mos 6502
Motorola 68000
Zilog Z80
Intel 8080 
should be your pre x86 foundations

unless you want to go pre microprocessor Then you have things like the Apollo or Babbage

[superbrett2000]

The 8086 for sure since it introduced the core instruction set we're still using today. 

 

Other honorable mentions include AMDs first 64 bit CPUs and the Intel hyper threaded 3.06 ghz P4 chip. I had one of those back in the day and it was an amazing CPU.

[Beerzerker]

One milestone was when AMD introduced Socket 754, the first commercially available 64 bit capable CPU to the public market at large.
It was only capable of single channel RAM operation at the time but then Socket 939 came out correcting this limitation.

3 hours ago, freeagent said:

The AMD64 instruction set, while not a CPU, it is something that is active on any 64 bit system running in the mainstream today.

 

So anything that was on s754/940/939 would have brought that to us. I have a soft spot for Sandiego/Toledo cores..

 

Core 2 was awesome, Core i7 was awesome.. pretty much Intel until Zen 2ish? Now its back and forth again.

I love my San Diego's and Toldeo's too - And Denmark cores (Opteron) as well.
All of those for 939 were good and fun to mess with.

There were several Socket 775 chips that made a real splash as well.
Probrably the one mentioned most being the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, that one being popular because of how far it can be OC'ed beyond stock but others like the Wolfdale series are popular too.

[Blue4130]

8 hours ago, superbrett2000 said:

The 8086 for sure since it introduced the core instruction set we're still using today. 

 

Other honorable mentions include AMDs first 64 bit CPUs and the Intel hyper threaded 3.06 ghz P4 chip. I had one of those back in the day and it was an amazing CPU.

Disregard my stupidity

[VioletGiraffe]

The first 64-bit CPU (some AMD FX)

The first dual-core consumer CPU (also AMD, IIRC)

Core 2 Duo - a huge leap over Pentium 4 / Pentium D, and first truly mainstream dual-core 64-bits CPUs.

Core 2 Quad Q6600 - also not the first quad-core, but the first mainstream one.

Sandy Bridge - not as big a leap, but a very good and long-lasting generation overall. The first AVX CPUs, probably?

Intel 6950X was pretty amazing at the time.

Zen 1 release (esp. the 8-core parts - Ryzen 1700/1700X1800X) was very influential in breaking the stagnation, as well as Intel's de-facto monopoly. Also Threadripper 1950X - the first 16-core non-server CPU.

[porina]

43 minutes ago, VioletGiraffe said:

The first 64-bit CPU (some AMD FX)

The first dual-core consumer CPU (also AMD, IIRC)

If my memory isn't off, the first dual core CPUs were Athlon X2. Intel had introduced HT with P4 before then so people already had access to 2 thread systems in mainstream, but joined in on dual cores with Pentium D. Dual CPU systems were also consumer affordable before then. Abit BP6 mobo was my first, running dual Celerons 366@550 MHz.

 

The first 64 bit CPUs were Athlon 64. I don't think they used FX name yet.

[Beerzerker]

18 minutes ago, porina said:

If my memory isn't off, the first dual core CPUs were Athlon X2. Intel had introduced HT with P4 before then so people already had access to 2 thread systems in mainstream, but joined in on dual cores with Pentium D. Dual CPU systems were also consumer affordable before then. Abit BP6 mobo was my first, running dual Celerons 366@550 MHz.

 

The first 64 bit CPUs were Athlon 64. I don't think they used FX name yet.

Note that there were others before AMD made theirs, what's refered to by the above is what was available for a home/desktop computer for consumers (Like us) but there were certainly older ones such as the Nintendo 64 console, which was released in 1996.

Here's some sources to refer to:
Multi-core processor - Wikipedia

64-bit computing - Wikipedia
 

[porina]

18 minutes ago, Beerzerker said:

what's refered to by the above is what was available for a home/desktop computer for consumers (Like us)

Got it. I didn't want to repeatedly say consumer x86 in front of everything so that was implied.

[Mihle]

I will do something else than what other people here are doing and mention newer stuff. Maybe less when it comes to influential and more to do with interesting. Even if it goes against what OP asked:

 

• Chiplet designs, both AMD and Intel.
• The 3D V cache that AMD is doing.
• Intel doing big little cores with cores that are cut down, while AMD on the server side instead just makes the normal cores smaller.

Is all things I find very interesting.

[thrasher_565]

486 had good times on it at my friends house

p4 was my first cpu (dont remember witch one my dad said we oced it to 1gh)

the q6600 was quite famous

i7920 was a really cool cpu