This article presents a detailed timeline of events in the history of computing from 2000 to 2009. For narratives explaining the overall developments, see the history of computing.
The US Government announces that restrictions on exporting cryptography are being relaxed (although not removed). This allows many US companies to stop the long running process of having to create US and international copies of their software.
January 19
Transmeta releases the Crusoe microprocessor. The Crusoe was intended for laptops and consumed significantly less electricity than most microprocessors of the time, while providing comparable performance to the mid-range Pentium II microprocessors. Transmeta and Crusoe, new competitors to Intel and their products, initially appeared exciting and promising.
Be Inc. released BeOS R5 for PowerPC and x86, which was the first release of BeOS for x86 to have a freely downloadable version which could be fully installed on a user's hard drive.
Intel releases very limited supplies of the 1 GHz Pentium III chip.
June 20
British Telecom (BT) claim the rights to hyperlinks on the basis of a US patent granted in 1989. Similar patents in the rest of the world have now expired.
September 6
RSA Security released their RSA algorithm into the public domain, in advance of the US patent (#4,405,829) expiring on September 20 of the same year. Following the relaxation of the US government restrictions earlier in the year (January 14) this removed one of the last barriers to the worldwide distribution of much software based on cryptographic systems. The IDEA algorithm is still under patent; government restrictions still apply in some places.
Intel releases the Pentium 4. The processor is built using the NetBurst microarchitecture, a new design since the introduction of the P6 microarchitecture used in the Pentium Pro in late 1995.
2001
Date
Event
January 4
Linux kernel version 2.4.0 released.
February 1
Foundation of the newco Loquendo as a spin-off of the CSELT's voice technology group.
February
The Agile Manifesto, which crystallised and named a growing trend towards more "agile" processes in software development, was released. The perceived success of agile project management led to agile approaches such as Scrum later being used as a general project management approach in other fields, not just in software development or even in computing.
March 24
Apple released macOS (as Mac OS X). This was a new operating system derived from NeXTSTEP, using Darwin as its kernel, an Open Source operating system based on BSD. This replaced the "classic" Mac OS for its Mac computers. Mac OS X finally gave Mac users the stability benefits of a protected memory architecture along many other enhancements, such as pre-emptive multitasking. The BSD base also makes porting Unix applications to Mac OS X easier and gives Mac users a full-featured command line interface alongside their GUI.
Microsoft released Windows XP, based on Windows 2000 and Windows NTkernel. Windows XP introduces a heavily redesigned GUI and brings the NT kernel to the consumer market.
Nvidia releases GeForce FX, a family of DirectX 9.0-compatible 3D cards with extensive support for pixel and vertex shaders. With this new product Nvidia makes an emphasis on image quality, proclaiming a "dawn of cinematic computing", illustrated with the popular Dawn demo utilising extremely realistic skin and wing shaders.
March 6
SCO Group announces it would sue IBM for US$1 billion. The claim is that Linux contains code inserted by IBM that was the copyrighted property of SCO (see SCO v. IBM).
March 12
Intel releases the Pentium M for notebooks and the Centrino mobile platform. The Pentium M delivers similar or higher performance than the Pentium 4-M while consuming less power.
April 22
AMD releases the Opteron line of server processors. The Opteron is the successor of the Athlon MP, and introduces the 64-bitK8 microarchitecture.
September 23
AMD releases the Athlon 64. The Athlon 64 is built on the K8 microarchitecture and is the first 64-bit processor widely available to the consumer market.
Nvidia releases GeForce 6800, claiming it is the biggest leap in graphics technology the company ever made. Independent reviews show more than 100% increase in productivity compared with the fastest card on the market. Continuing the tradition, the company demonstrated Nalu, a mermaid with extremely realistic hair. A few weeks later, rival ATI announces the X800 series with nearly the same level of performance and feature support. The card is showcased by the Ruby demo, delivering a smooth real-time rendering of what was previously in the exclusive realm of prerendered cinematics.[2]
October 20
The first release of the Ubuntu Linux distribution.
Intel releases the Core brand. These are mobile 32-bit single-core and dual-core processors that were built using a modified design of the Pentium M's microarchitecture.
January 10
Apple Computer introduces the MacBook Pro, their first Intel-based, dual-core mobile computer, as well as an Intel-based iMac.
June 19
Researchers create experimental processor that operates at higher than 500 GHz when cryogenically frozen.[5][6]
Asus announces the first Asus Eee PC, launching the netbook category of mobile computers.[8] It initially ran Linux; later models also offered a choice of Windows.
AMD releases the Phenom line of high performance processors, positioning the Athlon as a mid-range line.
2008
Date
Event
September 2
The first public beta version of the Google Chrome web browser was released. Chrome subsequently became the most popular web browser in the world, overtaking Internet Explorer.
A Brief History of Computing, by Stephen White. An excellent computer history site; the present article is a modified version of his timeline, used with permission.
