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Obsolete (in CPUs, i.e. as word-size or main datatype). Except in AI, then the future... |
Guy Harris (talk | contribs) →History: The root certificate isn't trusted, at least not by Safari. |
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The first commercial single-chip computer was the 4-bit [[Texas Instruments]] [[TMS 1000]] (1974).<ref name="Shirriff_TMS1000">{{cite web |author=Ken Shirriff |url=https://www.righto.com/2020/11/reverse-engineering-ram-storage-in.html |title=Reverse engineering RAM storage in early Texas Instruments calculator chips}}</ref> It contained a 4-bit [[central processing unit|CPU]] with a [[Harvard architecture]] and 8-bit-wide instructions, an on-chip instruction ROM, and an on-chip data RAM with 4-bit words.<ref name="TI_1976_TMS1000" />
The [[Rockwell PPS-4]] was another early 4-bit processor, introduced in 1972, which had a long lifetime in handheld games and similar roles. It was steadily improved and by 1975 been combined with several support chips to make a one-chip computer.<ref>{{cite web |url=
The 4-bit processors were programmed in [[assembly language]] or [[Forth (programming language)|Forth]], e.g. "MARC4 Family of 4 bit Forth CPU"<ref name="UT_Forth" /> (which is now discontinued) because of the extreme size constraint on programs and because common programming languages (for [[microcontroller]]s, 8-bit and larger), such as the [[C (programming language)|C programming language]], do not support 4-bit data types (C, and [[C++]], and more languages require that the size of the [[character (computing)#char|<code>char</code>]] data type be at least 8 bits,<ref name="ISOIEC9899_1999_1" /> and that all data types other than bitfields have a size that is a multiple of the character size<ref name="ISOIEC9899_1999_2" /><ref name="Cline" /><ref name="CPP" />).
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