Ancient Mammoths
Back in the pioneering years, a computer would mean an a huge room of mechanical and electrical components. These machines were custom designed to perform only a limited number of tasks. They can only be operated by a dedicated team of specially trained technicians. A single unit would cost an entire company department. Back then, computers were not meant for individuals or home use. Only large corporations need and own them.
Rise of the Machine: Desktop Computers
In November 1971, the world’s first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004, was released. It’s general purpose architecture opened the possibilities for multiple applications from a single chip design. Combined with Intel’s RAM chip, a new era of personal desktop computers was ushered. Altair 8800, IMSAI 8080 and other models immediately made their way for personal use. Microsoft and Apple Computers emerged from this revolution. They made personal computers useful and available for the general public.
Attack of the Clones: IBM PC Compatibles
The arrival of the IBM PC finally set the standard for general purpose, low cost and practical computing. Small businesses, professionals and hobbyists can now afford desktop computer hardware and software. The high availability of the IBM PC further encouraged the development of related technologies that eventually created its own industry – the PC. Students, hobbyists and programmers can now create simple and robust games or applications which were easily distributed through floppy disks. The industry flourished to the extent that IBM eventually lost control of the PC standard while it slowly took life from Microsoft and Intel.
Portable Heavyweights
The idea of having a portable computer is not a recent concept as you might think. Even 4 decades ago, Xerox PARC already wanted to produce a self-contained personal computer. This means a self-enclosed design where most components are attached for a quick pack-up and easy deployment. These “luggable” personal computers typically weighed from 10-30 kilograms (22-66 pounds) and folded into a size of a portable sewing machine. The monitors are about 6-9 inches is diameters while the keyboard are revealed when unfolded. A mouse may be included.
NoteTaker: The First Portable Computer
The Xerox NoteTaker was developed in 1976. It came with an 8-bit 1MHz CPU and 128KB of RAM which were advanced during its time. The NoteTaker came with a monochrome display, a floppy disk drive, and a mouse. It ran on SmartTalk a graphical operating system weighed 22kg (48lbs.). While it was very promising, only 10 prototypes were made and it never entered production.
The Osborne Effect – Revisited
The first commercially successful portable personal computer was the Osborne 1. This portable computer was released in 1981. It featured a 4MHz Z80 CPU, 64KB RAM, detachable keyboard, parallel/serial ports and ran on the CP/M operating system. It was mainly based on the Xerox NoteTaker.
Compaq vs. Hyperion
The Compaq Portable was released in January 1983 and came with a larger 9-inch green screen. Hyperion rivaled Compaq because it was the first portable IBM PC compatible computer. It was also shipped in January 1983 with 256KB RAM, 360KB 5.25” floppy drive, 7-inch CGA monitor and a 300bps modem. Office software were bundled. In February 1984, IBM finally released their first luggable machine, the Portable PC 5155 model 68.
The Convertibles
The IBM PC Convertible model 5140 truly resembled a clam-shaped design of a modern laptop. It was introduced in April 1986. I was powered by an 4.77MHz Intel 80c88 CPU, 256+KB RAM, dual 720KB floppy drives and an monochrome CGA LCD screen. It weighed 5.8kg (13 pounds) and includes a carrying handle. The MinisPORT by Zenith Data Systems debuted in 1989. This modern-looking laptop came with 640KB of RAM, 3.5” 1.44MB floppy drive, 20MB hard drive, 2.4K baud modem and a color LCD display.
Toshiba vs. Mac
The Toshiba’s laptop series culminated with the T1200 in 1987. It was ticking at 9.54MHz, 1MB RAM, a 720Kb 3.5” floppy drive and a 20MB hard drive. Macintosh Portable arrived in 1989 with a 16MHz Motorola 68000 CPU at 16MHz bus, 1MB RAM that’s upgradeable to 5MB and a 3.5” 1.44MB floppy drive. It weighed at 7.2kg (15.8lbs) because of its lead-acid batteries.
The Laptop De Facto Standard
The Macintosh PowerBook series emerged in 1991 and eventually set the standards for the modern laptop form factor. It introduced the first serious offering for the Laptop genre of personal computers. Three versions were released to satisfy consumer budgets. PowerBook 170 is the fastest of the Series. It is driven by the 25MHz Motorola 68030 CPU, 4-8MB RAM, 40-80MB hard drive, 1.44MB floppy Superdrive, active matrix display, a trackball and Mac OS 7.6.
Mobile Intel
The laptop PCs in 1991 are limited to Intel 286 CPUs because 386 processors consume huge amounts of power. But the arrival of the power-optimized Intel 386SL processors included laptops in future CPU design considerations. The 25MHz 386SL is a 386SX core integrated with a memory controller paired with an I/O chip to produce the SL chipset. A System Management Mode (SMM) function is embedded. It is packed with 855,000 transistors using 1 micrometer process. This was widely implemented in the notebook market in its time.
486 Extinction
The Intel 486SL, a power saving and complete 486DX CPU, followed this path. It was released on November 1992 and was clocked at 20, 25 and 33MHz. This chip packed 1.4 million transistors, has SMM included and manufactured at 0.8 microns. This model was later abandoned in favor for the arrival of the Pentium and mobile Pentium microprocessors.
Heated Confrontation: 030 vs. 486
The 32-bit Motorola 68030 CPU has an integrated Floating Point Unit and Memory Management Unit. It has six stages of full-pipeline architecture. The 030 is basically a shrunk 68020 core with added data cache. This process allowed Motorola to pack more hardware on the CPU die. However, the Intel 80486 used in 1994 laptops can be overclocked better without the overheating problems of the 030. Because of this, Apple was unable to recover their lead in this period.
The First Touchdown
The PowerBook 500 series is the first laptop to use a touchpad as pointing device. The 500 series is powered by a 40MHz Motorola 5068LC040 CPU and can be upgraded to a 68040 that has an FPU. It sports a 9.5-inch passive color display, 16-bit stereo sound and expansion options.
Multimedia Laptop 95
Microsoft Windows 95 implemented the Advanced Power Management specification. This simplified notebook power management in the OS. Rebooting and entering the BIOS was no longer needed to set power management policies. Windows 95’s multi-media features justified the need for CD-ROM drives and Intel Pentium CPUs for the laptop computers.
Spinning Laptops
The Gateway Solo was the first 3-spindle (hard disk, optical & floppy) notebook computer. At the same time, the IBM ThinkPad, Toshiba Satellite and the Dell Latitude were gaining reach using Pentium-based 2-spindle (hard disk & floppy) systems in the corporate market.
Aim High PowerPC!
The PowerBook 5300 series was the first generation of PowerBook laptops to use the PowerPC processor in August 1995. They are attributed as the first to feature hot-swappable expansion modules. PowerPC is a RISC-based architecture (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) A CPU design strategy which uses simplified instructions. It was designed by Apple, IBM and Motorola (AIM).
Celeron’s Mission
During these periods, most Intel-base laptop computers are either using desktop processors or their scaled-down versions to prolong battery life. The Pentium II CPU touched down on May 1997 running at 233-450MHz clock frequencies with 7.5 million transistors using 0.35 or 0.25 micron processes. The first Intel Celeron microprocessor was based on the Pentium II chip. It is similar in most ways including the clock speed and fabrication process. The only difference are that they have little or no L2 caches, have slower bus speeds and have disabled multimedia features. Mobile versions were developed for both PII and its Celeron counterpart.
PowerBook G3
The first PowerBook G3 shipped in 1997 with a 250MHz G3 processor and a 12.1″ TFT SVGA LCD. The PowerPC G3 is not microprocessor, but in fact, a set of microprocessors from different vendors. It is a 32-bit system designed and manufactured by IBM and Motorola. The PowerPC 740 and 750 CPUs were introduced in late 1997 to power the PowerBook G3 laptop. The CPU can reach speeds of up to 366MHz while only consuming 7.3W.
K6 Redux
The AMD K6-2+ is an enhanced K6-2 with 570MHz core frequency and 128KB L2 cache using a 0.18 micron process. It’s essentially a K6-III+ with only half the L2 cache. The K6-2+ was intended as a low-power mobile CPU. It was released when mainstream desktop CPUs were quickly migrating on to newer platforms like the Athlon. It sold in modest numbers to its target market. The AMD K6-2+ chip were sometimes used on desktops.
The PowerPC G3
The PowerPC G3 came with a 66MHz 60x system bus, 32KB instruction and 32KB data L1 caches, a second integer unit, an enhanced floating point unit, higher core frequency and on-die cache controller/tags. It supports the optional 256, 512 or 1,024KB external unified L2 cache. Both caches are accessed by a dedicated 64-bit bus. The 740/750 models contains 6.35 million transistors. It was initially produced by IBM and Motorola using an aluminum-based 0.26 micron fabrication process.
Pentium III: 3 Variants
The Pentium III was inaugurated on February 1999. It housed 9.5 million transistors through a 0.25 micron process. The Katmai version is clocked at 450-600MHz, 100-133MHz bus speed with Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) and 512KB off-die L2 cache. The Coppermine CPUs ran from 500MHz–1.1GHz frequencies with 100-133MHz system bus and was made by a 0.18 micron process. The Tualatin chip formalized the Gigahertz Era by starting at 1,133MHz and reaching 1.4GHz with a 133MHz bus. The die has 32KB L1 cache and 256-512KB integrated L2 through a 0.13 micron process. Mobile editions are available for Coppermine and Tualatin.
Mobile Celerons
The Coppermine (PIII) –based Celeron hit the market on March 2000 and featured 28.1 million transistors processed at 0.18 microns. They operated from 533-850MHz with 66-100MHz system bus, 32KB L1 cache and 128KB L2. The Tualatin (PIII) –based Celeron ran from 1-1.4GHz at 100-133MHz bus speed with 32KB L1 and 256KB L2 caches. They were manufactured using the 0.13 micron technology process. These 2 Celeron derivatives also have low-voltage versions specifically meant for the Mobile computing market.
The Laptop Generation
The year 2000 is the time when the mobile computing market started to flourish because of the growing demands for multi-media notebooks and decreasing hardware costs. A TFT LCD SVGA display became the minimum standard. CD writers and floppy drives were included. Multiple expansion ports are available around the laptop. A Fax/Data modem and a 100-Base Ethernet adapter became the norm. Hard drives were large enough and batteries gain longer hours.
The Mobile Athlon
The AMD Palomino Core was first released as a mobile version. It was called the Mobile Athlon 4 or Corvette. This stock has 64KB data & 64KB instruction L1 Cache and 256KB full-speed L2 Cache. It ran with 133MHz FSB and has MMX, 3DNow! and SSE technologies.
G4: The Last PowerBook
The PowerBook G4 laptop was announced at MacWorld Expo in January 2001. On November 2002, the last version of PowerPC G4 featured a 867MHz or 1GHz clock speed with 256KB backside L2 cache and 1MB backside L3 cache.
Pentium 4 Unleashed
The much awaited Pentium 4 desktop processor reached the public on November 2000. It introduced the NetBurst Architecture which features very deep instruction pipelines that can reach frequencies up to 3.8GHz. This rate is only limited by the Thermal Design Power that went as high as 115W. The bus is only 100MHz but was Quad-Pumped to reach 400MHz. It utilized SSE2 and later SSE3 instruction sets for better multi-media processing. Newer Pentium 4 chips introduced the Hyper-threading (HT) Technology where a single physical CPU works as 2 virtual CPUs.
Mobile Mac for the People
The iBook, a line of Apple laptop computers between 1999 and 2005. It initially ran on 500-900MHz PowerPC G3 CPUs with 32-576MB RAM. The last editions used 800MHz-1.42GHz G4 processors with 256MB-1.5GB RAM. It was targeted at the consumer and education markets with its lower specifications and prices.
The Mobile Pentium
The Pentium 4-M processor entered the laptop market on April 2002. It featured Intel’s SpeedStep and Deeper Sleep technologies for the laptop CPUs. Other related laptop processors emerged like the Pentium III Mobile, Mobile Pentium 4 and Pentium M which is the fastest of the 4. Unlike the desktop Pentium 4, Pentium 4-M has lower voltage, less heat and did not need an Integrated Heat Spreader (IHS).
The Mobile Pentium 4 was developed to the address the self-defeating practice of using a full desktop Pentium 4 CPU in laptops. The Mobile Pentium 4 ran on a Front-side Bus (FSB) of 533MHz and bridge the gap between Pentium 4 and Pentium 4-M.
The Mobile Celeron
The Mobile Celeron was derived from the Mobile Pentium 4. While the Celeron M processor is built from the Pentium M chip design and released on March 2003. They are similarly clocked with their normal Pentium counterpart but performed better and drained more battery life. These 2 Celerons differ from regular chips in terms of their lower FSB rating and reduced multi-media capacity.
The Mobile Athlon XP
The mobile Athlon XP-M are identical Athlon XP. It only worked at lower voltages, bus speeds and is not multiplier-locked. This enabled the chip to consume less power and generate less heat. It was ideal for battery-powered laptops. Athlon XP-M processors also have a higher heat tolerance making it suited to the tight conditions of a laptop. Athlon XP-M is based on the newer Thoroughbred and Barton cores. It replaced the older Mobile Athlon 4 that used the older Palomino core.
The Intel Centrino Platform
In 2003, Intel launched the Centrino brand, a platform-marketing initiative. A laptop with a Centrino sticker will have an Intel mobile chipset, a Pentium M CPU and a mobile Intel wireless adapter. The Carmel platform is the first offering and included a Pentium M CPU, Intel 855 chipset and an 11MBps Wi-Fi adapter. Sonoma platform followed on 2005 with a Pentium M CPU, Intel 915 chipset on 533MHz FSB and a 54MBps Wi-Fi adapter.
Further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_laptops and
http://www.geekwithlaptop.com/laptop-revolution-where-size-does-mater-a-whole-lot
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