Intel’s problems became so pronounced that last year it ousted its chief executive, Patrick Gelsinger, and cut 15,000 jobs. The company’s share price has fallen 54 percent over the past year.

Intel was feeling particularly proprietary about the X86 architecture because it had been extending it for two decades at this point. Intel created the progenitor of the X86 architecture back in 1971 ...

The 1971 Intel 4004 is essentially a calculator processor. This processor only had 2,600 transistors, whereas computers today have literally billions of these switches, which is why you can play video ...

He took the design and capabilities of the Intel 4004 chip to create a "PC" running Linux. The only catch is that booting up the rig took 4.76 days. Which is unusable.

That machine had a 32-bit MIPS R3000 processor running at 8 MHz; the Intel 4004 works in 4-bit nibbles and runs at 790 KHz. Yes, that's 0.79 MHz.

Yes, over half a century ago now, the Intel 4004 appeared in all its 4-bit glory (with its successor being the Intel 8080, later leading to the famous 8086 processor, ushering in the x86 era).

The hacking pro's latest project was the self-imposed challenge of getting Linux to run on an Intel 4004 from 1971. It was Intel's first commercial chip and predates Linux by two decades.

In short, he managed to get the kernel of Debian Linux to boot on a 4-bit Intel 4004 processor, the first ever commercially manufactured microprocessor. Even by the standards of the 1970s, the ...

The final hardware uses the 4004 (overclocked to 790 kHz) along with several other period-correct support chips from Intel's MCS-4 chipset. It includes a VFD display to show Linux output and can ...