The Evolution of the Personal Computer

In 1981, IBM introduced a personal computer (PC) powered by an Intel® 8088 processor. At first, the PC was not much more than a glorified typewriter or calculator, but relentless technological advances and innovation over the past quarter century have put powerful PCs at the center of daily activities for people worldwide. Like the telephone, automobile, and television before it, the PC has changed the way people communicate, shop, retrieve information, and entertain themselves.

Factoids

1 billion Internet-connected PCs
Intel estimates that there are approximately 1 billion Internet connected PCs worldwide today.

10,000 times as many transistors
The Intel® Core 2 Duo processor has 291 million transistors, more than 10,000 times as many transistors as the Intel 8088 CPU in the first IBM PC which had only 29,000 transistors.

The first IBM PC
The first IBM PC did not include a mouse, graphical user interface with Windows or icons, 3-D or animation capability or a hard drive to save files. The most common monochrome model cost approximately $3,000.

Today's PC
Today, consumers can buy a basic desktop PC with a workhorse Intel® Celeron® D processor, a 160 gigabyte (160 billion bytes) capacity hard drive, 256 megabytes (256 million bytes) of RAM, and a flat-panel monitor for less than $500 (U.S.). They can also buy a super high performance PC with an Intel® Core™2 Duo processor, 4 gigabytes of RAM , a 500 gigabyte hard drive, and deluxe graphics and sound systems for less than $2,300.

Twenty five years of PC evolution

The introduction of the IBM personal computer (PC) in 1981 marked a fundamental turning point in computing. Today it would be hard for many of us to imagine our lives without Personal Computers.