image/svg+xml
curve shows transistorcount doubling everytwo years
2,300
10,000
100,000
1,000,000
10,000,000
100,000,000
1,000,000,000
2,600,000,000
1971
1980
1990
2000
2011
Date of introduction
4004
8008
8080
RCA 1802
8085
8088
Z80
MOS 6502
6809
8086
80186
6800
68000
80286
80386
80486
Pentium
AMD K5
Pentium II
Pentium III
AMD K6
AMD K6-III
AMD K7
Pentium 4
Barton
Atom
AMD K8
Itanium 2
Cell
Core 2 Duo
AMD K10
Itanium 2 with 9MB cache
POWER6
Core i7 (Quad)
Six-Core Opteron 2400
8-Core Xeon Nehalem-EX
Quad-Core Itanium Tukwila
Quad-core z196
8-core POWER7
10-Core Xeon Westmere-EX
16-Core SPARC T3
Six-Core Core i7
Six-Core Xeon 7400
Dual-Core Itanium 2
AMD K10
Microprocessor Transistor Counts 1971-2011 & Moore's Law
Transistor count