Linux on the intel 4004 microprocessor from 1971:
From the person that did it: “I booted Debian Linux on a 4-bit intel microprocessor from 1971 - the first microprocessor in the world - the 4004.”
Short vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQZZ21WZZr0
Long vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQZZ21WZZr0
Background on the project: Linux/4004 - Dmitry.GR
CPU Speed: "As mentioned before, each 4004 instruction takes either 8 or 16 clock cycles to execute. The 4004 is specified to run at 740KHz. Intel wanted to ship it at 1MHz, but apparently it couldn’t perform at that speed across its entire temperature and voltage range. On my board, however, I am overclocking it to 790KHz with no issues. "
Boot time: " the expected boot time could be measured and would have been around 8.9 days of real time on a real 4004 at 740KHz. My initial goal was to get the boot time under a week. Looking back at my log, some of the major wins on this were: lookup tables for logical ops and a lookup table for multiplication. This brought the expected boot time down to 8.4 days."
After lots of optimization - Boot Time: "The boot time dropped to 4.81 days! "
