Some people collect stamps. Others will gather beer mats, pennies or garden gnomes. For one man in Russia, though, his weakness is CPUs and this week he revealed his "modest" collection to the world. The massive stash contains over 1,000 processors dating from as early as the mid-70s all the way up to some relatively modern chips.
The huge collection contains representatives from manufacturers from all over the world. As well as the usual suspects, like Intel, AMD, IBM, VIA and TI, there are processors from Toshiba, Cyrix, Siemens, NEC, Mitsubishi and a number of Russian manufacturers. Interestingly, a few are marked as ‘USSR clones', presumably relics of the Soviet-era that were lost to the world and long-since forgotten by most.
The horde also acts as a bizarre time-line of processor development, with the earliest entries that we could spot being either an Intel 4004 or an 8085, the latter being manufactured in 1976. A great many landmarks in CPU history are represented in between, and the newest entry seems to be a 2003 Prescott-core Pentium 4.
For CPU or computing-history buffs, this should be a nice wander down silicon-memory lane. For some others - the present author included - it may be a little terrifying that some of these chips are significantly older than they are. Especially since "virtually all" of them are still in working condition.
Take a look through the list and see if you can spot any old favourites. For the really adventurous, feel free to see how many you can identify just from the pictures.
