Keith Roberts
NT1110
9-18-2011
Intel Transistor Count Model

Processor Model | Year | Transistor Count | Intel 4004 | 1971 | 2,300 | Intel 8008 | 1972 | 3,500 | Intel 8080 | 1974 | 4,500 | Intel 8085 | 1976 | 6,500 | Intel 8086 | 1978 | 29,000 | Intel 8088 | 1979 | 29,000 | Intel 80186 | 1982 | 55,000 | Intel 80286 | 1982 | 134,000 | Intel 80386 | 1985 | 275,000 | Intel 80486 | 1989 | 1,180,000 | Pentium | 1993 | 3,100,000 | Pentium II | 1997 | 7,500,000 | Pentium III | 1999 | 9,500,000 | Pentium 4 | 2000 | 42,000,000 | Atom | 2008 | 47,000,000 | Itanium 2 | 2003 | 220,000,000 | Core 2 Duo | 2006 | 291,000,000 | Itanium 2 w/ 9MB Cache | 2004 | 592,000,000 | Core i7 Quad | 2008 | 731,000,000 | Six-Core Xeon 7400 | 2008 | 1,900,000,000 | Six-Core Core i7 | 2010 | 1,170,000,000 | Dual-Core Itanium 2 | 2006 | 1,700,000,000 | Quad-Core Itanium Tukwila | 2010 | 2,000,000,000 | 8-Core Xeon Nehalem-E-X | 2010 | 2,300,000,000 | 10-Core Xeon Westmere-E-X | 2011 | 2,600,000,000 |

The year that 2 billion transistors were introduced on a single processor chip was 2010. I believe that the growth pattern for Intel is definitely reasonable. It is a fast growth rate and computer technology seems to jump at a high rate every 2 years. I think that by the year 2022 we will have 100 billion transistors on the processor chip. All of the sources for the information on this page can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count. Though I don’t always trust Wikipedia, it was the best diagram available for this information.