These chips with their many components were given the label LSI, forĮngineers recognized that the increasing density of MOS transistors would eventually allow a complete computer processor to be put on a single chip. Photo: Intelīy the end of the 1960s, a single MOS integrated circuit could contain 100 or more logic gates, each containing multiple transistors, making the technology particularly attractive for building computers. But it was not without rivals for that title. The Die is Cast: Intel’s 4-bit 4004 chip is widely regarded as the world’s first microprocessor. Integrated circuits continued to increase in complexity, as described by Moore’s Law, but now MOS technology took the lead. But by 1964, integrated circuits based on MOS transistors boasted higher densities and lower manufacturing costs than those of the bipolar competition.

These transistors were slower, less reliable, and more expensive than their bipolar counterparts. At first this technology wasn’t all that promising. The metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) transistor. In 1960, a new type of transistor was demonstrated: So although a minicomputer built from bipolar integrated circuits was much smaller than earlier computers, it still required multiple boards with hundreds of chips. But because of the complex structure of these transistors, an integrated circuit could contain only a small number of them. By the 1960s, engineers had figured out how to combine multiple bipolar transistors into single integrated circuits.

Early devices were of a type called bipolar transistors, which are still in use. Transistors, the electronic amplifiers and switches found at the heart of everything from pocket radios to warehouse-size supercomputers, were invented in 1947.

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