Would you like chips with your BigMac? Whether you do, or even care what a chip is, when the chips are down, it is perhaps the major basic functional component/s of any computer system -- and most puter users have not the foggiest idea what chip is actually inside their toy, who made it, what it does or how it compares with previous and/or newer generation chips. It is hoped that this page may provide some basic background and understanding of these issues. It is mainly focused on those used in Apple Computers, but eventually I hope to include a more general historical and comparative overview when I have more time.
Most of the actual comparative spec material has been submitted by our own in-house tech expert, Ron, to whom I owe mucho respectful thanks. If errors or misinterpretations are found, they may be due to my transcription and/or understanding of his data/concepts. Although the basic concepts are rather straight forward, sometimes exactly how these ideas might be translated into layman's terms is the most difficult part. I shall try to do my best.
Keep in mind that chip technology is changing rapidly, and totally different kinds of chips are being developed which will make computing yet faster than it already is, use less energy and work more efficiently.
This page is still being updated, thus far on a daily basis since I started it, until I have everything just exactly as I think it should be -- and I keep finding more goodies to add! So stop by again, and you may probably notice some additions/changes.
What is Silicon?
Silicon is one of the most abundant elements in the Earth's crust. Various forms of siliceous minerals are found in nature, having the basic formula SiO2 - one atom of silicon and two of oxygen. It has a hardness of 7 on Moh's Scale, a standard for determining the relative hardness among minerals; diamond is the hardest (10), while talc is the softest (1). Quartz is also found as a major component of certain common rocks such as granite, quartzite and sandstone.
Quartz, by far the most common silicious mineral, occurs as a non-crystalline or amorphous solid (opal, jasper, agate, flint), and in a crystal structure termed hexagonal, having 4 axes of symmetry, one usually long central one, making the crystal elongated in one direction, and 3 usually shorter axes perpendicular to that, which produce the usual exterior flat planes, facets or crystal faces associated with these crystals. They may occur as single crystals or in aggregates within mineralized veins and lining the walls of hollow geodes.
The coloring in some varieties of quartz is the result of other elements included in the basic formula of quartz as trace elements. Amethyst, is an example, which is purple or violet colored because it contains trace amounts of manganese or ferric iron.
Many of the world's marine, estuarine and other beaches are composed of light-colored/transparent quartz sand, weathered from rocks and broken down over millions of years by erosion, being transported from their mountain sources via rivers and streams to the ocean. The so-called Cape May Diamonds, which have been traditionally found along the beach at Cape May Point (New Jersey) are actually colorless transparent pebbles of quartz weathered from the Appalachians in upstate Pennsylvania and carried by the Delaware River to the southern shores of New Jersey! They are made into various items of jewelry.
Glass is quite simply fused colorless quartz.
Computer / Chip Evolution
OK, let us work our way forward from the precursors of the chip -- the vacuum tube and the transistor.
Vacuum electron tubes are those usually vertical glass bulb-like things
found glowing inside
the old classical radios when they are operating.
The old radios take a while to warm up, which means the time it takes for their vacuum tubes (also termed a VALVE in the UK) to absorb electrical energy, heat up for the electrons to start flowing and become functional. The valve opens and shuts, allowing current to flow through, or stops it from moving.
Many of the olde tyme radios have beautifully
styled wooden cabinets -- hey, and even the controls and embelishments
were contrasting bronze-colored metal! I fondly remember the large
radio/record player combo at my grandmother's place. And they
are highly sought after by collectors. 
You may be surprised to learn that the first computers arrived at this stage of the game. The Eckert-Maunchly Computer Corporation, taken over by Rand-McNally in 1950, was developing The UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer), the first of which appeared in 1951. It weighed 16,000 pounds, contained 5,000 vacuum tubes and was able to perform about 1,000 calculations/sec.
There were no PCs (personal computers) at this time. The monster UNIVAC systems of the 1950's, operated via large reels of magnetic tape for memory storage, and input via punch cards fed into card readers. The punch cards were an even earlier technology, invented by the IBM Corporation for their calculating devices.
At about the same time, in 1952, the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University developed the IAS, the first general purpose computer, which consisted of 2,300 vacuum tubes. Its first problem, from the Los Alamos Laboratory, took 60 days to solve, running 24 hours/day!
I remember frequenting the glass enclosed UNIVAC installation at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia as a teenager in the 1950's, (I have a pic of me there, and it will appear here when I can locate and scan it) and getting my first hands-on preview of what would eventually develop into the PC and revolutionize society as we now know it.
Well, I finally found the photo, c.1957/8
-- 
-- I was
a freshman in high school and led the science club to see the
new fangled computer at my favorite hangout downtown -- on the
back it has a pic reference number -- 
-- to obtain further copies.
When I was working on my doctoral dissertation
in 1974 at the University of la Laguna in Tenerife, Canary Islands
(Spain), all of my data was processed via hundreds of punch cards,
each of which had to be manually cut by way of a typewriter/keyboard.
The program was written in FORTRAN. Hey, and being as imaginative
as I always somehow tried to be (and still do!), I even created
my own personalized punchcard invitations to the presentation
of my dissertation! 
(INVITACIÓN
in Spanish -- I typed in the rest of the invite using a normal
typewriter)
The next step in this evolution was the transistor, which greatly reduced the space occupied by vacuum tubes. The transistor, invented by Bell Laboratories in the year 1947, allowed for the reduction in size of common household appliances such as stereo systems and radios. As with any new technology, it took a few years to really catch on.
Transistors begin to function instantaneously, and need a lot less energy. They may be thought of as a GATE, functioning in much the the same way as a valve to transmit or stop current from moving through the circuits. Since they are a lot smaller than radio tubes, they paved the way for the miniaturization of many devices commonly used in the home and business.
Now comes the chip. A chip is actually what is termed an IC or integrated circuit, containing transistors, resisters, and other electronic components. The first silicon chip was patented by Robert Noyce, co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation, in 1959. It consisted of a single transistor and was used basically in calculators.
Chips do the same conceptual job as valves and gates, but function based on 1's = ON = current flows, and 0's = OFF = current stops. It is the computer system which translates these incredibly extensive series of 1's and 0's into letters, numbers, colors and everything else you can see on your puter screen.
Chips use even less current than a transistor, and the actual amount of electricity depends on the process used to manufacture the chip, among other things. Older chips needed more energy, contained fewer transistors engraved onto them, and produced more heat than some of their more modern counterparts. The more heat produced means that more powerful chip arrays would need some kind of ventilation system to maintain a working enviromnent in which they could function properly. And some older computers really make a lot of noise simply due to the cooling fan/s! This has been overcome in some cases by making the chips thinner, thus requiring less energy input, and/or redesigning the heat sink, as Apple did in the Cube, in which there is NO ventilator. Cooling is produced by the circulation of air at ambient temperature from the base of the Cube, upward, through the top vent. The Cube was, thus, the first modern fan-less computer.
The first computer chips were produced by INTEL in 1970. The first microprocessor = CPU was apparently the 4004, a 4-bit chip with an amazing 1K of RAM. It was followed, two years later by the 8008, which had an 8-bit processor.
As these chips developed, they were composed of many hundreds, thousands or millions of transistor-like components in an even smaller space, which provides the framework for yet more miniaturization of many types of electronic devices such as cell phones., and the sometimes sort of complicated controls and settings/memory of microwave ovens, blenders, TV remotes and digital cameras -- and, of course, computers.
There are MANY chips in your computer, each having a particular function. Some store data for later reference, while others are used as processing space for whatever operations you may be engaged in, whether working on images or doing complex mathematical calculations via some financial or scientific application.
It was in 1975 when the first real forerunner of the PC appeared, when MITS came out with their Altair 8800 computer -- no screen yet, and it had to be hooked up to a TV, image in black and white. At that time, extra memory cost a measly $264 for 4Kb.
An interesting tidbit about the Altair is that, when placed close to an AM radio, the octal instruction codes in the circuits, via RF emissions, caused sounds of various frequencies to be heard on the radio. Creative programmers soon got their gray cells chugging and actually wrote programs which would play music by way of these Radio Frequency transmissions! One of them happened to be Daisy, the tune heard in the Kubrick movie, 2001, when Dave was dismantling Hal's computer brain!
At about the same time, the IMSAI 8080 appeared,
and was slightly more advanced than the Altair. 
A year later, Steve Wozniac, then 26 and working at Hewlett-Packard, and his pal, Steve Jobs, 21, with a job at Atari, developed the logic board for the Apple I -- and founded Apple Computer on April Fool's Day of 1976! I was still teaching and continuing my research in Tenerife. The motherboard was basically of interest to fledgling hobbiests at the time and sold like hotcakes.
In 1977 Apple Computer was incorporated, and the Apple II arrived on the home computer scene. It consisted of a box (the term used for the enclosure of the electronic components of a computer), keyboard and power supply, had a whopping 4K of RAM, and the data was handled via a tape recorder, using the normal format tape cassettes -- still no screen, and everything was in black and white. Floppy drives/disks had not yet appeared. When I look back on the early PCs, it is really amazing how far they have advanced at the present point in time! If the Fates allow, I may still be able to organize the vintage puters in my collection, take pics and begin an extended section of this site devoted to the developmental history of PCs.
How are Computer Chips Made?
Computer chips begin as very pure sand grains [the exact details of this process were given to me over the phone from the west coast, and certain facts are a little fuzzy -- if any of my readers has this info, please contact me - link near bottom of page]. They are actually grown in a special hand-blown glass tube, which itself costs some $25k$ - I do not know if they are able to be reused! OK, so seed sand grains are placed in the tube, a very thin wire runs through the center of what I might call the crucible, a vacuum is created, and electrical current is passed through the wire, causing crystalization of a single pure silicon crystal. When they first started growing silicon crystals a few years ago they were only about 4" long, some 3-4" wide, and took about a week to develop. Now they are able to produce them much faster, with a diameter of 8", and in lengths exceeding 8'!
The resulting cylinder-like crystal shatters and flakes just as easily as glass. According to my source, using a polarizing microscope one may make out the orientation of the different crystal axes (similar, but not the same as those shown, above, for quartz). The wire is so thin that he has never actually seen it in the center of the crystal. Any waste/excess in the process is reused, and apparently speeds up the formation of a new silicon crystal -- perhaps in the same way as rennet acts sort-of as a seed/accelerant in the cheese making process?? I wonder what the discard or waste percentage might be in an average batch. I would assume that here would always be attrition somewhere along the line.
These long silicon crystals are then sliced
exceedingly thin and are photo-engraved, which cut into the surface
the component parts of the circuits, which may number in the thousands
or millions! These parts are then all connected somehow by micron-thin
"wires". 
The thinner they are sliced, the harder it is to keep the miniscule electrical currents from jumping where they are not supposed to, causing anomalies in the results of any operation. Newer chip technologies employ a SOI = Silicon On Insulator, which greatly reduces these escapes of current by sandwiching an insulating material onto the chip somehow. I even read somewhere recently, that nanotubes of carbon might also be used in chip production.
They are mass produced in batches, and due to the slight variations within the crystallized structure of the silicon itself, and/or the way it was sliced, some chips will have different qualities than others, including clock speed in Hz. I personally find it mind-boggling that each chip has to be examined and certified as to its theoretical and real specifications.
Once the chip supply is ready, they are
then mounted onto the CPU unit, which is the real brain of any
computer. The connecting pins may just be plain metal, but in
newer CPUs, the pins are gold plated for much better circuit reliability.
The top part may be enclosed in plastic, ceramic or some other
insulating material. 
Once the chip supply is ready, they are then mounted onto the CPU unit, which is the real brain of any computer.
What is the Chip's Function in a Computer?
There are a few terms that need to be identified in the above diagram --
CPU - Central Processing Unit - whatever main processing chip is in the computer you are using. It is that component which allows for everything else to happen. For example, when you turn your computer on, you might want to go online. You would click on the icon of the application for your internet provider (which is stored in your ROM (see below) to launch it. That application is now loaded into your RAM (see below) and may be processed by your CPU. When you shut down your puter, that application returns to storage in the ROM.
IN - what is called an INPUT device by which you feed your always-hungry puter some data and stuff. It includes the keyboard, and any external devices that provide data, for example, your digital camera, ZIP drive, CD/DVDs, etc. It also means that different operations can move in from one of the internal components to some other.
OUT - provides output FROM your computer. It can be sound through the speakers, an image or data on your screen, or the stuff you print with your printer. It also means that different operations can move out from one of the internal components to some other.
IN/OUT - takes in data and outputs the processed results.
Bus - this is the speed at which data is able to be actually moved and processed among the different components of the puter. It is NOT the same thing as the nominal MHz speed of the main CPU (880MHz, for example). There are buses for the main CPU (System Bus), the hard drive (ATA Bus), the memory cards (Memory Bus), the graphics (AGP Bus) and AirPort cards, and perhaps others, depending on what is installed in your puter. From what I can observe, ALL of these busses do NOT run at the same MHz speed, which quite simply, makes some operations a tad slower than others.
The ATA Bus is the access channel to your hard drive (HD) and its ROM (Read-Only Memory), which stores all of your applications, saved files (pict or text), and whatever else you might stash on your computer. The data is always there (unless, of course, you delete it), ready to be used for the work you are currently doing. It is here that your operating system (OS) is kept; without it, when you turned on your machine absolutely nothing would happen. The more ROM you have, the more stuff you can keep stored on your puter, be they apps or saved files of any kind, MP3's, iMovies, etc.
DIMM Slots - where the memory cards are installed. There may be several cards, each having the same or different MB capacities up to an allowed total, which depends on the computer model you are using and the slots available. Your TOTAL available random access memory (RAM) is the sum of the individual memory cards. RAM is where all of your temporary input data, pics, etc. are stored for access while processing. The more RAM you have, the easier it is to be working with large files and multiple applications. When you SAVE the results of any operation, they then are stashed in the ROM for future reference.
RAM may also be of several flavors - DDR SDRAM - xxxxxx, RDRAM - xxxxxx, PRAM (Parameter RAM) - where your computer settings and preferences are stored.
These slots may be of several kinds - SO-DIMM, xxxxxxx
I/O Controller - that central thingy which acts as a task master, wired to all of the components in your computer. All of the stuff above the iMac jacks and ports in the above schematic diagram is frequently referred to as the MOTHERBOARD, the main circuit board in your machine.
When you open your computer enclosure, it is here, in the DIMM slots, that you add memory cards. Just be sure that they are firmly in place and you hear the click when the holding tabs move into place or the card may not be properly seated.
memory card
You may also find other computer-related tech terms at the link on the bottom of this page.
What is the Difference Between Chip Generations?
from 1976 - 2002
Below you will find data pertaining to several different chips used in Apple Computers, (mainly desktops) arranged in order of appearance, according to different general computer specs/parameters. The red *numbers refer to NOTES below the table.
The data presented pertains to some of the basic models from the new G5 to the Apple I. There were several models of some machines, and I have selected, in general, the ones with the lowest machine IDs to include in the table. I shall update this list as I find new info.
|
Chip C P U MPC# *0 |
Apple Model Machine ID |
Year of Intro |
CPU Speed [Hz] *1 M = Mega G = Giga |
Bus Speed [Hz] MegaHZ *2 |
Operating System Mac OS issued from - to |
Motherboard RAM *3 Memory [bytes] M = Mega G = Giga K = Kilo |
Hard Drive ROM *4 |
NOTES Display Media |
|
G5 8500 *10 |
T |
2004 |
?G |
x |
x |
x |
x |
--- |
|
PowerPC 7450 - G4 |
new iMac 406 |
2002 |
700M to 800M |
100 |
9.2.2 to X |
128M to 1G |
40G to 60G |
15" LCD USB Ethernet FireWire CD + DVD-RW |
|
PowerPC 7400 - G4 |
Cube 406 |
2000 |
450 to 500M |
100 |
9.0.4 to X |
64M to 1.5G |
20G to 60G |
no screen USB Ethernet FireWire DVD-ROM or CD-RW |
|
PowerPC 750 - G3 |
iBook P1 portable 406 |
1999 |
300 to 366 |
66 |
8.6 to X |
288M to 320M |
3.2 to 6G |
12.1" screen USB Ethernet CD-ROM |
|
PowerPC 750 - G3 |
iMac BondiBlue 406 |
1998 |
233M |
66 |
8.1 to X |
96M to 512M |
4G |
15" screen USB Ethernet CD-ROM |
|
PowerPC 603ev |
Performa 6400 58 |
1996 |
180 to 200 |
40 |
7.5.3 to 9.1 |
1.6G to 2.4G |
8M to 136M |
no display CD-ROM floppy |
|
Motorola 68030 |
Macintosh TV 88 |
1993 |
32 |
16 |
7.1 to 7.6.1 |
4M to 8M |
160M |
14" screen CD-ROM floppy |
|
Motorola 68LC040 |
Quadra 605 94 |
1993 |
25 |
25 |
7.1 to 8.1 |
4M to 36M |
80M to 160M |
no display floppy |
|
Motorola 68LC040 |
Centris 610 52 |
1993 |
20 |
20 |
7.1 to 8.1 |
4M to 68M |
80M to 500M |
no display CD-ROM floppy |
|
Motorola 68030 |
Performa 200 23 |
1992 |
16 |
16 |
7.0.1 to 7.6.1 |
2M to 10M |
40M to 80M |
9" screen floppy |
|
Motorola 68040 |
Quadra 900 20 |
1991 |
25 |
25 |
7.0.1 to 8.1 |
none to 256M |
80M to 160M |
Ethernet CD-ROM floppy |
|
Motorola 68020 |
Macintosh LC 19 |
1990 |
16 |
16 |
6.0.7 to 7.5.5 |
2M to 10M |
40M to 80M |
no display floppy |
|
Motorola 68000 |
Macintosh Portable 10 |
1989 |
16 |
16 |
6.0.5 to 7.5.5 |
1M to 8M |
40M |
display floppy |
|
Motorola 68020 |
Macintosh II 6400 6 |
1987 |
16 |
16 |
2.0 to 7.5.5 |
none to 20M |
40M to 80M |
no display floppy |
|
Motorola 68020 |
Macintosh SE 5 |
1987 |
8 |
8 |
2.0 to 7.5.5 |
none to 4M |
none to 40m |
9" B+W display floppy |
|
Motorola 68000 |
Macintosh Plus 4 |
1986 |
8 |
8 |
1.1 to 7.5.5 |
none to 4M |
none |
9" B+W display floppy |
|
Motorola 68000 |
Macintosh XL 2 |
1985 |
5 |
5 |
MacWorks to MW 6.0.5 |
none to 2M Lisa cards |
none to 10M |
12" B+W screen floppy |
|
Motorola 68000 |
Macintosh M0001 1 |
1984 |
8 |
8 |
1.0 to 6.0.8 |
128K |
none |
9" B+W display floppy |
|
? |
Apple I |
1976 |
x |
x |
x |
x |
x |
motherboard only |
N O T E S
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-- 
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and comments may be emailed to the editor of Apple Bytes at 
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