
Microprocessors - 1-bit to 64-bit Generations
About this Artwork This listing is for an artwork that displays a historical look at devices capable of doing digital arithmetic from 1-bit devices to 64-bit microprocessors. Chips have evolved from doing a simple addition of two bits to complex mathematical operations on 64-bit numbers. The chips in this display track the progress from logic chip adders to true microprocessors. The most important criterion for determining the bits of a microprocessor is the size of the accumulator or general-purpose registers. Second is the size of the data path, and the third is the address space size. As an example, if all are 16-bits in size, then the device is called a 16-bit microprocessor. If it is a mix, well, the naming controversy starts. The chips used in this display are representative of their respective generations. Here are the devices used in this artwork: 1-bit Half Adder, Motorola 353 1-bit Full Adder, Signetics 7480 4-bit Arithmetic and Logic Unit (ALU), Texas Instruments 74181 4-