Interview with Federico Faggin

[naked1300]

Dear collector community,

I know it was a bit quiet on my youtube channel CPUGALAXY for a while and
I am not so active in this forum any more. Unfortunately the day has inly 24 hours and I am quit busy with my regular work.

Nevertheless I have a lot of interesting ongoing projects for my channel and for one of my recent projects I would like to hear your opinion as well.

In June I will meet Federico Faggin in person and he wants to give me an interview for my youtube channel. Well, since he is the developer of the Intel
4004, the first commercial microprocessor, and the founder of Zilog, he is one
of the last pioneers of semiconductor history alive.
Since I am a collector since decades Dr. Faggin was always one of my heros
of semiconductor history.

Well, when i am going to meet him in June I see that as a really once in a live
chance and somehow I want to be there not only Peter, I want to be as well
the voice for the collectors community.

Since I don’t want to ask the same questions Dr. Faggin already answered in his career and dozens of interviews my question to you
is if you have any wishes or questions you would like to get answered from
him.
I know that some of the younger collectors are maybe not so familiar with
him, but ai am pretty sure that some fellows here might come up with some
questions

Looking forward to your feedback.

Cheers, Peter
http://www.youtube.com/cpugalaxy

[xsecret]

Please ask him more about 4004 Engineering Samples!

[xiaoyanxu]

Must be a great interview.

I hope.
I can get his autograph.

My question.
How many nanometers will be the limits of semiconductor manufacturing processes.
What happens when this limit is exceeded.

[naked1300]

[Williac]

I think it would be interesting to hear about the development of the 4004 versus the 4005 that Intel and Microsystems International were working on.

edit: Probably better known as the MF7114, but was technically the "4005" (https://museum.eecs.yorku.ca/items/show/117)

Did it add any pressure to complete and work out any design bugs in the 4004 more quickly?

What was his opinion on the base design being licensed to MIL for alternative development before the 4004 was complete?

[CPUShack]

I would be interested in some of the second sources Intel used at the time (the mysterious Hitachi 4004 etc) as well as the production difficulties that led to those.

Intel 4004 vs the TI 1000 could be fun too

[Grampa]

Hi Peter,
I have some more for you:

I was always wondering how back in the early 70ies or even late 60ies they managed such a complexity like a CPU without any tools like - e.g. Computers. Was it paper-based? mutual negotialtions? How did they manage the complexity of a CPU during development and also during production with such pristine results?

Also I wonder how they managed to start production in remote places like in the philippines or malaysia. Back in the early 70ies even my home town in germany was almost 100% farmers. I'm curious what challenges they had in order to making production there possible.

Since back in the 60ies there was a shift away from scientific calculations towards moving data from / to storage for controllers or administratve or commercial purpose. What are his feelings about the purpose of CPUs today - have they become data movers? Today massively parallel tasks are sometimes processed by GPUs and systems have become heterogeneous. What are his thoughts about the roles and resonsibilities of all those diverse processing units in today's computing environment?

Second last, I'd be interested in his thoughts about the fact that today even simple chat programs like MS-Teams waste so much CPU power and RAM that it sometimes takes ages to switch from one communication partner to the other while wasting GB of RAM while Mr. Faggin has been working so hard to enable all that computing and storage power that we have available today (Rant against today's web/mobile SW developers expected ).

Lastly: is he aware of what he gave to mankind? Structured thinking of humans caused by the need of programming, lots of entertainment to billions of individualts each day, all the Internet, home schooling, remote university degrees, staying in contact with your family in a pandemic, but also spread of fake news was enabled by his invention (I won't blame him for that for sure!). What are his thoughts about the effect of his inventions?

Dear Peter, I envy you! Have a great time with him. Looking forward to the outcomes.

Best Regards
Christian / Grampa
cpu-museum.de

[Marcin]

Hey Peter,
Great interview is coming. Good luck but from watching your YT videos I have no worries about your professional

My suggestion for a few questions to Mr. Faggin :
1) Where there projects before 4004 which were abandoned due to defect / other problems ?
2) If there were then what codenames and if Mr. Faggin can tell more about them ?
3) How much did "project 4004" changed his life during this time? Was it a revolution from the very beginning or it took years to succeed ?

Maybe I'm asking to much but worth a try at this occassion. If everyone who would like to receive his autograph as addition to their collection maybe would be good idea to print his photo from 4004 era and prepare same sentence only changing names and print as template to grab autographs for everyone ?
For example :
"To Marcin (ABC CPU) from # autograph from Federico Faggin here "
"To xiaoyanxu from # autograph from Federico Faggin here" ...

I will cover costs (of print and shipping) of course. If Mr. Faggin agree for sign of them we can send all together to AVICC.

I don't want to say for others but autograph would be very nice addition to my collection and very valuable from historical side.

[xsecret]

For sure, I would love to have an autograph from Federico!

[popo]

I only have one question to him:

May I have your autograph on my C4004?

[vmr_]

Joining the list of members looking for an autograph from
Federico �

to Marian ...

[Borris70]

For sure an autograph would be great

[Williac]

I'd go in for an autograph too!

[CPUShack]

[Vegeta]

An excellent idea!