Intel has shipped its 1 billionth computer chip since its first microprocessor for personal computers in 1978. Mercury Research calculates that the next billion X86 CPUs could come as early as 2007.

The original 16-bit 8086 chip contained only 29,000 transistors and ran at 5 megahertz. Today’s Pentium 4 processor contains 55 million transistors and runs more than 600 times as fast at 3.06 gigahertz.