In the beginning - page 2

The IBM PC came out in 1981, using an Intel chip made from about 100,000 transistors. Soon thereafter came the Apple Mac which used a 68,000 transistor Motorola chip.

Today's processors are pushing hundreds of billions of transistors.

So what was added between then and now? The "core" went from 100 thousand transistors in 1981 to over 100 billion transistors today. What do a 100 billion transistors do that 100 thousand couldn't?

For one thing, we have much more powerful arithmetic units with 64-bit floating point operations, and lots and lots more memory. But that still doesn't explain billions of transistors.

The answer, I submit, is: multi-tasking. The ability of the processor to run multiple programs simultaneously.