In the half century that integrated circuits have dominated, many outstanding microchips have been born out of people’s disbelief, but of these, only a small part have become the best of them.
Their design proved to be so advanced, so avant-garde, so advanced that we had to create more technical vocabulary to describe them. It can even be said that they bring us technologies that make life simple, and without them our lives will become tedious. Take a look at the 25 microchips below. They have shocked the world and changed our lives!
1. Signitik NE555 timer (1971)
It was the summer of 1970, and its designer Hans Camenzind even recalled one or two things about Chinese restaurants at the time. In the downtown area of Sunnyvale, California, the company has three offices. Camenzind’s office is sandwiched between the two offices and is very small. At the time, Camenzind was a consultant to a local semiconductor company, Signitique. Camenzind was not affluent at the time, with an annual salary of no more than $15,000, and his wife and four children.
Camenzind really needed to invent something outstanding at the time. Of course he did the same. In fact, this is the most outstanding microchip in history. 555 is a simple IC that can be used as a timer or oscillator. This microchip became the best-selling product of its kind, and it was quickly applied to kitchen supplies, toys, spaceships, and thousands of other products on a large scale.
Camenzind recalled: “The microchip was almost unsuccessful at the time.” When the idea of designing the 555 came up, Camenzind was designing a system called a phase-locked loop. After some modifications, the circuit can work like a simple timer. You set the time, it will run in a specific period. It sounds very simple, but it is not the case.
First, the engineering department of Signitique rejected an idea. Because the company was selling some parts at the time, and customers could use these parts as timers. This has put an end to this idea, but Camenzind has always insisted on his own ideas. He found Art Fury, the marketing manager of Signitik. Fury appreciates this idea. To this end, Camenzind spent nearly a year testing the prototype circuit board, and repeatedly scratched the circuit on the paper, cutting the Rubylith masking film. Camenzind said: “It was all handmade at the time, there was no computer.” His final design had 23 transistors, 16 resistors, and 2 diodes.
555 entered the market in 1971, when it caused a sensation in the market. Signitique was acquired by Philips Semiconductors in 1975, which is now NXP Semiconductors. 555 sales reached billions. At present, engineers are still using 555 to design some useful modules and some less useful things, such as designing the lights of the movie “Thunder Knight” for the car grille.
2. TMC0281 speech synthesizer from Texas Instruments (1978)
Without TMC0281, ET may never be able to “call home”. This is because TMC0281 is the first single-chip speech synthesizer, and it is also the “heart” of the “Speak & Spell” learning toy launched by Texas Instruments (should we say “mouth”?). In Steven Spielberg’s movie, aliens used it to build their own interplanetary telegraph (in the movie, ET also used a hanger, a coffee pot, and a circular saw).
TMC0281 uses a technique called linear predictive coding to deliver sound. The sound sounds like a series of buzzing, hissing, and banding sounds. Gene A. Frantz, the four engineer of the year, is still at Texas Instruments. He said that this surprising solution was considered “impossible to be completed through integrated circuits.” The improved version of the microchip is used in Atari arcade games and Chrysler K-cars. In 2001, Texas Instruments sold the speech synthesis chip production line to Sensory, which suspended production of the production line later in 2007. If you need to make a long-distance or long-distance call, you can spend about $50 on eBay to buy a “speak and fight” toy that is still in good condition to meet your needs.
3. MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor of MOST (1975)
When a freak-faced freak installed this microchip on a computer and turned it on, the entire universe was shocked. This weirdo is one of the founders of Apple, Stephen Woznik. That computer is Apple I. The processor uses the 8-bit microprocessor 6502 developed by MOST. This processor is also the brain of classic computers such as Apple II, the Commodore PET, BBC Micro, and gaming systems such as Nintendo and Atari. Chuck Peddle, one of the designers of the processor, recalled that they introduced the processor at a trade show in 1975.
He said: “We filled two glasses with chips. My wife and I were sitting there selling these chips.” The 6502 microprocessor finally stood out because the 6502 was not much faster than its competitors, but It’s cheap, each priced at $25, while Intel’s 8080 and Motorola’s 6800 cost about $200. Bill Mensch, who designed the 6502 with Peddle, said that the breakthrough is the combination of a minimal set of instructions and production procedures, and its output is 10 times that of other competing products. The 6502 forced the price of processors to drop, which helped fuel the PC revolution. Today, some embedded systems are still using these chips. The greater interest may be in “Flying Out a Future”, where 6502 is the brain of the fallen robot Bender. This information appeared in the 1999 plot.
In the article “The Truth of Bender’s Brain”, the film producer and lead author of “Flying Out a Future” David X. Cohen will explain why he chose 6502 as Bender’s brain.
4. TMS32010 Digital Signal Processor from Texas Instruments (1983)
As a large state in the United States, Texas has left many deep impressions on us, such as the “ten-gallon” cap, chicken cutlet, Dr. Pepper drink, and the TMS32010 digital signal processor, but compared to the aforementioned For several specialty products, the TMS32010 digital signal processor may be slightly less famous. Although the TMS32010 developed by Texas Instruments is not the first DSP (the first DSP is the DSP-1 introduced by Western Electric Company in 1980), it is the fastest one. The TMS32010 can perform multiplications in 200 nanoseconds, and engineers are very excited about this result. In addition, it can execute instructions from fast on-chip ROM and slow off-chip RAM. The competing products only have DSP functions. Wanda Gass, a member of the DSP design team, is still at Texas Instruments. He said: “This advantage makes program development for TMS32010 more flexible, just like program development for microcontrollers and microprocessors.” Each TMS32010 is priced at $500, and in the first year this product sold 1,000 units. Subsequent sales began to soar, and DSPs are now widely used in modems, medical equipment, and military systems.
Oh, TMS32010 also has an application that is used on a cute doll, this doll can sing and talk. TMS32010 is the first in the large DSP family. The DSP family will continue to expand in the future, which is the wealth of Texas Instruments.
5. PIC 16C84 microcontroller of Microchip Technology (1993)
In the early 1990s, the 8-bit microcontroller area was exclusively owned by a Motorola company. Then a small competitor with an inconspicuous name appeared. This is Weixin Technology. Microchip Technology has developed the PIC 16C84, which integrates a memory called EEPROM. When erasing, the PIC 16C84 microcontroller does not require an ultraviolet eraser like its predecessor. Rod Drake, the chip’s main designer, is now a director of Microchip Technology. He said: “Now users can change their code in flight.” Even better, the cost of this chip is less than $5, which is only a quarter of the cost of other alternative products. These alternative products come mainly from Motorola. 16C84 has been used in smart cards, remote control, wireless car keys. 16C84 has become the beginning of the microcontroller field, and Microchip Technology has also become a superstar in the electronics industry in the “Fortune 500” ranking. At present, 16C84 has sold 6 billion units, some of which are used in industrial controllers, unmanned aerial vehicles, digital pregnancy tests, chip control pyrotechnics, LED jewelry, and septic monitors called Turd Alert.
6. Fairchild Semiconductor’s μA741 operational amplifier (1968)
Op amps are all silicon boards with similar designs. You are always using some of them. You can use them in almost everything, and they will also accomplish some tasks beautifully. Designers use them to make preamplifiers for audio and video, voltage comparators, accuracy correctors, and many other systems, which are all part of everyday electronics. In 1963, 26-year-old engineer Robert Widlar designed the first monolithic circuit operational amplifier IC, μA702, at Fairchild Semiconductor. At that time, each sold for $300. Subsequently, Widlar designed the μA709 through improvements, and the cost was reduced to $70, which made the product a huge commercial success. Here comes the story, and Widlar, whose career is flourishing, demands a promotion.
After the requirements were not met, Widlar resigned. When National Semiconductor won the treasure, it quickly hired Widlar. At National Semiconductor, Widlar helped establish a similar IC design department. In 1967, Widlar developed a better operational amplifier, LM101, for National Semiconductor. Although the management of Fairchild Semiconductor has become overwhelmed by the sudden competition, in the company’s R&D laboratory, newly joined David Fullagar has conducted a careful study of the LM101. Soon, Fullagar discovered that although the design of LM101 is very clever, there are still many shortcomings. To avoid specific frequency distortion, engineers had to connect an external capacitor to the chip. In addition, because the quality of semiconductors fluctuates, the input stage of the IC, the so-called front end, makes some chips very sensitive to noise. He said: “The front end looks like a temporary make-up feeling.” Fullagar set out to start his own design. He expanded the limitations of semiconductor manufacturing processes at the time and integrated a 30-pie capacitor in the chip. Now how to improve the front-end? The solution is very simple, is adding a pair of additional transistors. “At the time, I didn’t know how to solve this problem. I drove to Lake Tahoe.” The extra circuit made the amplification smoother, and it became very stable from chip to chip.
Fullagar took his own design and found Fairchild Semiconductor’s R&D director Gordon Moore. Moore then sent the design to the company’s commercial department. The new chip μA741 has become the standard for operational amplifiers. Millions of ICs and similar products developed by Fairchild Semiconductor’s competitors have been sold. You can buy thousands of 741 chips today at 702 for $300 each.
7. Intersil’s ICL8038 waveform generator (circa 1983)
Critics have always mocked the ICL8038 for its limited performance and irregular operation. This orthodox, right angle, triangle, sawtooth, and pulse waveform generator is certainly a bit unreliable. But engineers quickly found a way to use this chip reliably, and then 8038 achieved great success. In the end, 8038 sold millions of units and found its own application in countless applications. Such as the famous Moog music synthesizer, and the circuit breakers who defeated the telephone company’s “blue box” in the 1980s and so on. 8038 is so hot that Intersil has published a document called “All Aspects of ICL8038 that you have always wanted to know.”
There is such a question: “Why can connecting pins 7 to 8 get the best temperature performance?” Intersil gave up 8038 in 2002. But enthusiasts are still collecting ICL8038 to make their own generators and Taylormin keyboards. *At present, the public relations department of Intersil Company and the last engineers in the company who have contacted ICL8038 are unclear about the precise ICL8038 data. do you know?
8. Western Digital’s WD1402A UART (1971)
In the 1960s, Gordon Bell was known at Digital Equipment Corporation for the introduction of PDP series minicomputers. His findings are little known, but one of them has a significant technological invention: the universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter, or UART. Bell needs to connect some circuits to connect the teletypewriter with PDP-1, which requires parallel signals to be converted into continuous signals and vice versa. To achieve this goal, he used about 50 discrete components.
As a small company that manufactures calculator chips, Western Digital invented the single-chip UART. Western Digital’s founder Al Phillips recalled that his vice president of engineering at the time showed him the design with the Rubylith masking film, which was already equipped and processed. Phillips said: “I watched the design for a minute and recognized an exposed circuit. The vice president was a little excited.” Western Digital launched the WD1402A around 1971, and other versions were soon pushed out. Currently UART is widely used in modems, PC peripherals and other devices.
9. ARM1 processor of Acorn Computer Company (1985)
In the early 1980s, Acorn Computer Company was a small company with an important product. The company is located in Cambridge, England. Eventually, BBC Micro desktop computer company acquired Acorn Computer Company for $1.5 million. Acorn engineers decided to develop their own 32-bit microprocessor. Engineers call it Acorn RISC Machine or ARM. They know that ARM design is not easy. In fact, half of them predict that they will encounter insurmountable design obstacles and will eventually have to abandon the entire project. ARM co-designer Steve Furber is now a professor of computer engineering at the University of Manchester.
He said: “The size of the team is so small that every design decision is very simple, otherwise we will never be able to complete it.” In the end, simplicity made an unprecedented difference. ARM is very small, power consumption is low, and it is also easy to program. Sophie Wilson, who is responsible for designing the instruction set, still remembers when they first tested the chip on the computer. She said: “When we entered’PRINT PI’ at the prompt, it immediately gave the correct answer. We opened several bottles of champagne to celebrate.” In 1990, Acorn divested the ARM department. The ARM architecture has become a mainstream 32-bit embedded processor. About 10 billion ARM processors are widely used in various devices, including Newton, one of Apple’s most well-known failed products, and iPhone, Apple’s most proud product.
10. Kodak KAF-1300 image sensor (1986)
When the Kodak DCS 100 digital camera was launched in 1991, the price was as high as {{13000:0}} US dollars, requiring an external data storage device weighing up to 5 kg, so users had to carry it on their shoulders. What do users think of this design? This is not a wonderful moment for Kodak. However, the camera electronics at the time was the body of the Nikon F3, which included such a hardware: a chip the size of a thumb nail, it can capture images at a resolution of 1.3 million pixels, which is enough to 5 x 7 inches Size to rinse.
Eric Stevens, the main designer of this chip, is still in Kodak. Stevens said: “At the time, 1 million pixels was a dream number.” This chip-a true two-phase charge-coupled device, became the basis of the future CCD sensor, and its emergence also helped trigger the digital photography revolution. By the way, what was the first picture taken by KAF-1300? Stevens replied: “Well, we pointed the sensor at the laboratory wall”.
11. IBM Dark Blue No. 2 Chess Chip (1997)
On one side of the chessboard is a 1.5 kg human brain. On the other side is a 480 chess chip. In 1997, humans finally lost to the computer. At that time, IBM’s chess computer dark blue defeated the then world champion Gary Kasparov. Each chip in dark blue is arranged in a special way by 1.5 million transistors, as are some RAMs and ROMs. These chips can calculate 20 billion moves per second. In the game, people came to help Deep Blue decide, Kasparov called them “not like computers.” The designer of the dark blue, Feng-hsiung Hsu, who is now at Microsoft, recalled: “They showed great psychological pressure.”
12. Transmeta Crusoe processor (2000)
High power is accompanied by huge heat sinks, shorter battery life, and crazy power consumption. Therefore, Transmeta’s goal is to design a low-power processor that dwarfs Intel and AMD processors. Their plan is that the software can translate x86 instructions into Crusoe’s own machine code, and these higher levels of parallelism will save time and power. Crusoe is known as the greatest invention since integrated circuits, at least temporarily. The title on the cover of the May 2000 issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine is “Engineering Wizards Developed a Gold Processor”. David Ditzel, a co-founder of Transmeta, currently at Intel, said: “Crusoe and his successor Efficeon proved that dynamic binary decoding is commercially feasible.” He said that, unfortunately, before the emergence of the low-power computer market These chips have been around for several years. In the end, although Transmeta failed to deliver on their promises, they forced Intel and AMD to reduce power consumption.
13. Texas Instruments Digital Micromirror Chip (1987)
On June 18, 1999, Larry Hornbeck had a date with his wife Laura. They watched the movie “Pre-Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Crisis” at a cinema in Burbank, California. Hornbeck is not a fan of Jedi. The reason is that there is a real projector there. This projector uses a digital micromirror chip developed by Hornbeck at Texas Instruments. This chip uses tens of thousands of subtle mirrors hinged together to project light through the projector lens. Hornbeck said: “This screening is the first digital display of a major movie.” Now in thousands of theaters, movie projectors are using this digital light processing technology developed by Texas Instruments or called DLP. This technology is also used in rear projection TVs and office projectors. Hornbeck said: “Gentlemen, this effect was created by micromirrors.”
14.Intel 8088 microprocessor (1979)
Is there a chip that can bring Intel to the Fortune 500 list? Intel would say yes, that is 8088. This is a 16-bit CPU. IBM used it as the CPU of its own unique PC production line, and then 8088 ruled the desktop computer market.
In the vortex of fate, this processor based on the famous x86 architecture does not carry “86”. The 8088 is only a slight change from Intel’s first 16-bit CPU 8086. After Intel engineer Stephen Morse launched it, 8088 was called the “8086 castrated version.” Since the main innovation of the new chip is not in the name, its innovation is that 8088 processes data in 16-bit words, but it uses It is an 8-bit external data total route.
When the 8086 design is nearing completion, Intel executives have kept the 8088 project strictly confidential. The chief engineer of the 8086 project Peter A. Stoll also participated in some design work of 8088. He said: “Management does not even want to delay 8086 for a day, they are afraid to tell us that they have modified 8088 in their minds and will affect the completion time of 8086. The one-day task forces us to solve the microcode that used to take three days to solve. Loophole”.
After the first 8086 was launched, that is, after Intel shipped 8086 products and documents to a design department in Israel, two engineers, Rafi Retter and Dany Star, decided to change the processor to an 8-bit bus.
Intel’s Robert Noyce and Ted Hoff said in an article written for IEEE Micro in 1981 that this modification proved to be Intel’s most successful decision. In comparison, the 8088 integrated 29 000 transistors requires less transistor data, which is cheaper than the 8086, provides faster processing speed, is fully compatible with 8-bit hardware, and can be smoothly converted to 16-bit. processor.
The first PC to use 8088 was IBM’s 5150. The PC was priced at $3,000 at the time. Today, all PCs with CPUs in the world can regard 8088 as an ancestor. This is not bad for a castrated chip.
15. MAS3507 MP3 decoder of Micronas Semiconductor Corporation (1997)
Before the iPod, there was the Diamond Rio PMP300. The PMP300 was launched in 1998, and once it was launched, it became a hot sale. But its decay rate is faster than Milli Vanilli. However, this player has a striking feature is the use of MAS3507 MP3 decoder chip. This is a RISC-based digital signal processor with an instruction set that optimizes audio compression and decompression.
The MAS3507 MP3 decoder chip developed by Micro-Semiconductor allows Rio to load several songs into its own flash memory. It seems a bit funny today, but it was enough to compete with portable CD players. Haha, isn’t it interesting? Rio and its successors paved the way for the iPod. Now you can install thousands of songs, and even you can put all Milli Vanilli’s albums and music videos in your pocket.
16. Mosttek MK4096 4Kbit DRAM (1973)
Mostec is not the first company to introduce DRAM, and Intel has also introduced it. But Mostec’s 4-kilobit DRAM chip carries an important innovation, which is called the circuit design of address multiplexing technology. This technology was designed by Most Probable Co-founder Bob Proebsting. Basically, through multiple addressing signals, the chip can use the same pins to access the rows and columns of memory. This makes the chip no longer need more pins after the memory density increases, which can reduce costs. There will be minor compatibility issues here. 4096 uses 16 pins, while the memory made by Texas Instruments, Intel and Motorola is 22 pins. In the history of DRAM, what is after this biggest confrontation?
Mostek bet its future on the chip, and its managers began lobbying customers, partners, news media, and its employees. Fred K. Beckhusen, who was just hired at the time, was scheduled to test 4096 devices. Beckhusen recalled that Proebsting and CEO LJ Sevin came to his night shift at about 2 am to discuss with him. Beckhusen said: “They boldly predicted that within six months, no one would hear or pay attention to the 22-pin DRAM.” They were correct. 4096 and its successors have gradually become the mainstream of DRAM.
17. Xilinx XC2064 FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) (1985)
In the early 1980s, chip designers tried to use the power of every transistor in the circuit. However, Ross Freeman has a rather radical idea about this. He designed a chip full of transistors, which were loosely organized into logic cells. These logical units can be configured in turn or reconfigured through software. Sometimes, many transistors are not used. However, Freeman believes that Moore’s Law will eventually make transistors really cheaper.
He bet correctly. In order to sell chips called field programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs, Freeman co-founded Xilinx. The company’s first product, XC2064, was launched in 1985 when employees were assigned a task: they had to manually draw a sample circuit using XC2064 logic cells, just like Xilinx customers. Bill Carter, Xilinx’s former chief technology officer, recalled the task assigned by CEO Bernie Vonderschmitt: “He encountered some minor difficulties in doing this homework.” Carter is very happy to help his boss. He said: “We are all there, holding colored pencils on paper to do the tasks assigned by Bernie.” Today, FPGAs sold by Xilinx and other companies are used in many products on this list.
18. Ziglow Z80 microprocessor (1976)
Federico Faggin clearly knows the energy and money spent on selling microprocessors. During Intel, he contributed to the original 4004 and 8080 designs of two classic products. When he and Relph Ungermann, the former Intel, co-founded Zieglow, they decided to start designing a simpler chip: a single-chip microcontroller.
Faggin and Ungermann rented an office in Los Altos, California, began drafting a business plan, and began to seek capital. Faggin recalled that they had lunch at a nearby supermarket called Safeway, which was “Camembert and biscuits.”
Engineers soon discovered that the microprocessor market is already full of well-designed chips. Even if their chips are better than other companies, they can only earn meager profits, and they can only continue to eat cheese and biscuits. Ziglo had to focus on the higher level of the food chain. It can be said that the Z80 microprocessor project was born in this way.
Their goal is to do better than 8080, and can be fully compatible with 8080 software, in order to attract customers to give up Intel. For several months, Faggin, Ungermann and former Intel engineer Masatoshi Shima worked 80 hours a week at the table to draw the Z80 circuit. Faggin soon discovered that when designing a microchip, although the smaller the more beautiful, it will hurt the eyes.
He said: “At the end, I had to put on my glasses. I became myopic.”
The entire design team worked from 1975 to 1976. In March 1976, they completed a prototype chip. Z80 and MOST’s 6502 are products of the same era. Like the 6502, their success is not only the design that emerged, but also the price (about $25). Bringing products to market has given them a lot of confidence. Finally Faggin, who had a stomach ulcer, said: “That was an exciting time.”
The sale was ultimately successful. Z80 is used in thousands of products, including Osborne I (the originator of portable computers), Radio Shack TRS? 80 and MSX home computers. In addition, printers, fax machine photocopiers, modems and satellites also have Z80 figures. Ziglo also used the Z80 in some embedded systems. In a basic configuration, today the Z80 price is $5.73, which is even cheaper than a cheese and biscuit lunch.
19. Sun Microsystems SPARC Processor (1987)
The designer of the microprocessor can seek to increase the complexity of the CPU instructions to get more calculations in each calculation cycle. The team at the University of California, Berkeley has always been an anti-traditional pioneer. Their formulation is just the opposite. They have proposed a simplified instruction set. They believe that processing instructions too quickly will cause less behavior in each cycle. The Berkeley team led by David Patterson proposed RISC, which is a reduced instruction set computer.
As a purely conceptual study, RISC sounds very attractive. But is it feasible? Sun Microsystems bets on it. In 1984, a small team of Sun engineers began to develop a 32-bit RISC processor called SPARC (ie Scalable Processing Architecture). Sun plans to use this chip in a new workstation product line. Patterson, a consultant for the SPARC project, recalled: “One day the CEO Scott McNealy reappeared in SPARC’s R&D laboratory. He said that SPARC can increase the company’s annual revenue of 500 million dollars to billions of dollars each year.”
At that time, R&D encountered great pressure, and many outsiders expressed doubts about Sun’s success. What’s worse is that Sun’s marketing team has a terrible perception: SPARC is changing from good to bad. For this reason, the R&D team had to swear not to disclose information to other people or even Sun internal personnel, so as not to leak the information to competitor MIPS Technologies. At the time, MIPS Technologies was also exploring the RISC concept.
Robert Garner, the current IBM researcher who led SPARC design at the time, recalled that the first minimum version of SPARC consisted of 20,000 gate array processors, which did not even have multiply/divide instructions. Ten million instructions per second, which is three times faster than the complex instruction set computer (CISC) processor of the time.
Sun decided to use SPARC in high-margin workstations and upcoming servers. The first SPARC-based product was launched in 1987 as a Sun-4 series workstation. This product captured the market very quickly and helped the company break the $1 billion revenue mark. All this as McNealy predicted.
20. Tripath Technology TA2020 audio amplifier (1998)
Some of the high-fidelity audio enthusiasts insist that vacuum tube-based amplifiers can produce the best sound and will continue to do so. So when some audio associations announced that solid-state Class D amplifiers designed by Silicon Valley-based company Tripath Technology could transmit sounds that were as round and vibrating as vacuum tube amplifiers, it seemed extraordinary. Tripath’s design uses a 50-megahertz sampling system to drive the amplifier. Tripath claims that TA2020 has excellent performance and is less expensive than any solid-state amplifier of the same class. In order to showcase this product at the trade fair, Adya Tripathi, founder of Tripath, said: “We deliberately played a romantic episode of “Titanic”.” Compared with most class D amplifiers, 2020 is very efficient. Since no heat sink is required, a compact appearance can be used. The low-end 15-watt version of Tripath’s TA2020 is priced at $3 and can be used in external speakers and mini headphones.
21. Amati Communications’ ADSL chip (1994)
Remember the scene when you threw the squeaky 56.6k modem into the trash after the DSL appeared? You and two-thirds of global broadband users who use DSL should thank Amati Communications. In the 1990s, a DSL modulation method called discrete multi-tone, or DMT, appeared. Its basic principle is to think of a telephone line as a hundreds of sub-channels to improve transmission through the reversed Robin Hood strategy.
Amati’s co-founder, John M. Cioffi, now an engineering professor at Stanford University, said: “Bit was robbed by the poorest channel and assigned to the richest channel.” DMT defeated many solutions and became the global standard for DSL , Which includes the solutions of telecommunications giant AT&T. In the mid-1990s, Amati’s DSL chipset (one analog, two digital) sales were average. But by 2000, sales had soared to millions. Earlier in 2000, the annual chipset sales exceeded 100 million. In 1997, Texas Instruments acquired Amati.
22. Motorola MC68000 microprocessor (1979)
Because Motorola is at a disadvantage in 16-bit microprocessors, they decided to catch up in type. The mixed 16-bit/32-bit MC68000 has 68 000 transistors, which is twice the number of Intel 8086. The MC68000 also has internal 32-bit registers, but the 32-bit bus will make this product a bit expensive. So 68000 uses 24-bit address and 16-bit data line. 68000 may be the last important processor designed on paper with a pencil. Nick Tredennick, the designer of the 68000 logic unit, said: “I let the reduced-size flowcharts, execution unit resources, decoders, and control logic copies take turns among the project members.” The copies are very small and difficult to read. To this end, Tredennick’s colleague with bad eyes found a way to see the copy clearly. Tredennick recalled: “One day I entered my office and found a credit card-sized flowchart copy was placed on my desk.” Early Macintosh computers, Amiga and Atari ST used 68000. A lot of sales come from embedded applications in laser printers, arcade game consoles and industrial controllers. IBM uses 68000 as a chip in its PC product line. Because 68000 still has deficiencies in some aspects, IBM is also using Intel’s 8088 chip. As one observer said, the prosperity of Motorola has turned the Wintel system formed by the joint monopoly of Microsoft and Intel into the Winola system.
23. Chips & Technologies’ AT chipset (1985)
In 1984, when IBM introduced the PC of the 80286 AT production line, IBM had clearly become the winner of the desktop computer, and IBM also intended to continue to maintain its dominant position. However, these big blue plans were defeated by a small company called Chips & Technologies in San Jose, California. C&T has developed five chips that can replicate the functions of the AT motherboard. It can use about 100 chips. To make sure that these chipsets are compatible with IBM PCs, C&T engineers found that only one thing needs to be done. The main designer of the chip, Ravi Bhatnagar, is currently the vice president of San Jose Altierre. He said: “We didn’t bother with this, we just played games for several weeks to pass the entertainment mission test.” C&T’s chips allow manufacturers such as Taiwan Acer to produce cheaper PCs and initiate PC compatibility with IBM Machine intrusion. Intel acquired C&T in 1997.
24. Computer Cowboys’ Sh-Boom processor (1988)
The two chip designers walked to a bar. They are Russell H. Fish III and Chuck H. Moore, this bar is Sh-Boom. Oh, this is not a joke. In fact, this technical legend is full of discord and litigation, a large number of litigation. In 1988, when Fish and Moore designed a processor called Sh-Boom, it all started. The design of this chip is very advanced, it is even faster than the timer on the circuit board that drives other parts of the computer. To this end, the two designers found a way for the processor to run its own ultra-fast internal timer, while at the same time, the internal timer was still synchronized with the rest of the computer. Sh-Boom has never achieved commercial success. After applying for a patent for their design, Moore and Fish continued to engage in research and development.
25. Toshiba NAND flash memory (1989)
When the Toshiba factory manager Fujio Masaoka decided to reinvent the semiconductor memory himself, the invention of flash memory began. We will have an impression soon.
Before the advent of flash memory, we had to use tapes, floppy disks, and hard disks to store large amounts of data. Many companies are working hard to design a solid-state alternative. However, programs such as EPROM (requires an ultraviolet eraser to erase data) and EEPROM cannot effectively store large amounts of data.
In 1980, Fujio Masaoka hired four engineers to start a semi-secret project to develop a memory chip that would store large amounts of data and make it affordable for users. Their combat readiness is very simple. Fujio Masaooka, currently the chief technology officer of Tokyo Unisantis Electronics, said: “We know that as long as the transistors are reduced in size, the cost of the chip will also be reduced.”
Fujio Masuoka’s team has introduced an improved EEPROM product, the memory cell consists of a single transistor. At the time, conventional EEPROM required two transistors per memory cell. This small difference has a huge impact on the price.
In order to make a name easy to remember, they called this chip “flash”, this name is also because of the chip’s ultra-fast erasing ability. Now, you would think that Toshiba will quickly put this invention into production and watch the wealth that this invention brings to the company. Here you may not know the internal research and development of large companies. When this discovery was successful, the boss of Masao Fujio told him, okay, forget this invention.
Of course, Fujio Masaoka will not forget this invention. In 1984, Fujio Masaoka took his storage market drawings to the IEEE International Electronic Equipment Conference in San Francisco. This reminds Intel to start to develop flash memory based on “NOR” logic gate. In 1988, Intel introduced a 256K chip, which can be used in cars, computers and other devices. This brings a brand new business to Intel.
This prompted Toshiba to decide to market Fujio Masuoka’s invention. Fujio Masuoka’s flash memory chips are based on NAND technology, which can provide higher-capacity storage and prove to be easier to manufacture. In 1989, it finally succeeded, when Toshiba’s first NAND flash memory was put on the market. In fact, as predicted by Fujio Masaoka, prices have fallen.
In the late 1990s, digital photography introduced the application of flash memory. Toshiba has therefore become the largest player in this multi-billion dollar market. At the same time, Fujio Masuoka’s relationship with other managers in Toshiba deteriorated. Eventually, Fujio Masuoka resigned and left Toshiba.
Now NAND flash memory has become an important device in mobile phones, cameras and music players.
