Linux takes close to five days to load on this ancient CPU from 1971

Computers have been around for decades, longer than most of us, and there's a big difference between a CPU from 2024 versus one from 2014. Rewind the clock to 1971, and you have the first commercially produced microprocessor - the 4-bit Intel 4004. It is a chip initially developed for a calculator and so far removed from modern computing, so you'd be hard-pressed to find a practical use for it other than as a historical artifact.

This is where Dmitry Grinberg or Dimity.GR, who set the record for the lowest-end machine to run Linux back in 2012, enters the picture. He took the design and capabilities of the Intel 4004 chip to create a "PC" running Linux. The only catch is that booting up the rig took 4.76 days.

Which is unusable. Naturally, it makes for a fun experiment, and you can see the Intel 4004 emulation and hardware do its thing in the time-lapse video above. Keep your eye on the Windows clock, which churns through the hours as the 4-bit Intel 4004 from 1971 tries to deal with an operating system from the distant future.

Even running the simple 'ls' command to display a directory's contents takes around 16 hours to process. Dmitry Grinberg has posted a detailed blog post on the experiment, which covers the history of the Intel 4004 microprocessor, how it works, and the process of building one and the whole emulation process.

"It is not fast, but it is a real Linux kernel with a Debian rootfs on a real board whose only CPU is a real intel 4004 from the 1970s," Grinberg writes. "The goal of this project was always partially artistic. This is why the board has a pretty VFD on it, why I designed it to look retro, and why it has hanging holes on the top corners! The idea is that, once completed, it can be hung on a wall where it will slowly do... something."

You can also watch an unedited video, captured at 0.5FPS but running at 120X the speed or 60FPS here. Fair warning, though: it runs for over 1 hour and 40 minutes.