Microsoft’s first product and 500 million AMD CPUs (PCGH-Retro, July 22)

… 1975: The Microsoft company does not yet exist, and yet the collaboration between Bill Gates and Paul Allen already produces a first product: the BASIC programming language for the Altair computer. In weeks of work, Gates and Allen implemented the program for the first home computer in history – only with an emulator, without owning the computer. Despite technical problems, the perforated tapes work with the software at the first presentation for the Altair manufacturer MITS, and the contract is signed on July 22, 1975: In the future, BASIC will be sold as an optional accessory for the Altair, Gates and Allen will receive commissions. Since the Altair can hardly be used without a programming language, almost every copy is sold with the software and the business is quite lucrative – Gates then decides to abandon his studies and devote himself only to software sales in the future: with the company Microsoft.

… 2005: Windows XP has been on the market for years, and the successor is in sight. Many new technologies are promised for the new operating system, codenamed “Longhorn”, but it hasn’t yet had a name. The announced Microsoft on July 22, 2005: Windows Vista should be the name of the product. The word stands for “view” or “perspective” in Spanish and is intended to symbolize the clarity that Vista is intended to make particularly easy to use. However, the XP successor will not be available until early 2007.

… 2009: The semiconductor manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices, AMD for short, which is now in its 40th year, gives in a press release announced today, July 22, that the 500 millionth x86 CPU in the company’s 40-year history has been delivered
to have. While AMD initially appeared as a memory manufacturer and licensed manufacturer of x86 chips based on the Intel design, the Texans began to emerge from the big, blue shadow at the latest with the 80386 era. The AMD 386DX/40 was faster than Intel’s fastest production model, which only reached 33 MHz. In the following 486 generation, AMD later also shone with faster CPUs with up to 133 MHz, before the K5 was brought onto the market, a design that completely differed from the Intel architecture and, in 1999, with the Athlon even followed its own Intel Processors no longer compatible slots and thus dared mainboard platforms. With the Athlon 64 in the second millennium, AMD was able to put Intel under severe pressure in terms of performance and popularity among PC enthusiasts.