PPS-4

One of only four microprocessors introduced before 1974 (the others being Intel's 4004 and 8008, and National Semi's IMP-16). The PPS-4 was the only competitor to Intel 4004.

PMOS technology; the PPS-4 chip technology was metal gate versus the 4004's silicon gate. Although using a slower technology, the PPS-4 implemented a higher degree of parallelism than the Intel 4004. Its performance was comparable to the Intel 4004, according the 4004's designer Federico Faggin. The original PPS-4, 12660, was introduced in the third quarter of 1972. The PPS-4 had two follow-on versions PPS-4/2 (third quarter 1975) and PPS-4/1 (second quarter 1976). Like the 4004, the PPS-4 was used in computing, control and gaming applications. The PPS-4 can be found in several of Gottlieb's pinball machines. The PPS-4 uses the ZIP package found in Rockwell's later 6511. The ZIP package has the alternating leads to reduce package size. While the 4004 was bottlenecked with 16 leads, the PPS-4 had 42.