How the processor of the early 2000s "pulls" modern computer games

Just tough…

18 years ago, on August 13, 2002, Intel officially introduced the 90-nanometer technology

process.The most popular variations of Pentium 4 processors were released on its basis. The first chips manufactured according to 90 nm standards were SRAM chips with a capacity of 52 Mbit. This chip included more than 330 million transistors with a useful chip area of ​​109 mm.

Moreover, all currently existing technologies are muchmore difficult. For example, in 2002, CMOS transistors with a gate length of 50 nm were used. And its thin oxide layer was only 1.2 nm (less than five atomic distances of silicon). As you can see, even back then, chip production was a daunting task. Needless to say about, say, relatively recent 14nm technology! In the production of 90nm chips, 300mm silicon wafers with a total number of transistors exceeding 120 billion were used.

The first central processing units released by90nm technology, became the mobile Pentium M chips, introduced in March 2003. The first desktop "stones" were various versions of the Pentium 4 based on the Prescott architecture, announced in February 2004. These solutions boasted 125 million transistors and a very high clock speed - up to 3.8 GHz.