The Intel 4004 of 1971 was the first commercial microprocessor. How many transistors did it have?
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Answer
About 2,300 transistors
It was designed for a Japanese desk calculator, and its performance was comparable to that of room-sized computers from 25 years earlier.
How to estimate it
Divide chip area by transistor area. The 4004 was a sliver of silicon about 3 mm by 4 mm, so 12 square millimetres, or 12 million square micrometres. Its finest lines were 10 micrometres wide, and a transistor with its wiring needs a patch about 7 lines across: 70 × 70 = 4,900 square micrometres. 12,000,000 / 4,900 = 2,450. The real count was about 2,300 transistors.
Source: Intel
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