What was intels first product

November Intel The first microprocessor. The had only transistors and ran at a clock speed of KHz; but it was a historic breakthrough that enabled the ubiquitous computing technology we have today.

Bipolar and MOS are two technologies used to produce chips, and it was the switch to MOS, driven by Intel, that enabled the large scale integration necessary for the processors and memory chips of the PC revolution. Between them, these five chips embody all the major functions needed to build a personal computer. Thus, the was not the very first time someone implemented memory in Silicon; rather, it was the first commercial, practical, viable implementation of such a memory device.

It still does that today. The one exception is the EPROM, which was truly a new, unexpected discovery with no precedent in other companies. Intel The first 8-bit microprocessor. As a new company, Intel started at the back of the pack. The wager paid off. Honeywell chose not to use the chip, but Intel found success with other customers.

Perhaps more important, as a Silicon Valley historian noted in , the technical. Bipolar memory used established technology. Competitors who took comfort in that fact would not have that consolation for long. By this time, though, competitors such as RCA, Honeywell and Fairchild had come out with microprocessors, many of which, such as Motorola's family, provided superior performance. Zilog, whose engineers included Faggin and former Busicom engineer Shima, received rave reviews for its Z80 processor.

So how did Intel emerge as the victor? For one, the company strove to ensure that adoption was as easy as possible. Along with chips, Intel sold complete development systems to industrial designers to seed software development.

Competitors also miscalculated demand. National Semiconductor, for instance, marketed an expensive bit chip in an 8-bit world, recalled Mazor. Or not. In a final twist in the early years, IBM required that Intel find a second source for the chip. The company turned to AMD, singing a licensing agreement that effectively helped create its lead competitor today.

Next story: Big changes ahead for microprocessors. Be respectful, keep it civil and stay on topic. We delete comments that violate our policy , which we encourage you to read. Discussion threads can be closed at any time at our discretion.

Intel's accidental revolution Thirty years after the birth of the microprocessor, billions of the small chips have been built into everything from cars to children's toys. Michael Kanellos. But that's not the way the story was supposed to turn out. Next story: Big changes ahead for microprocessors Transmeta: Are the chips down?

Discuss: Intel's accidental revolution. Transmeta: Are the chips down? The Schottky diode in the Schottky transistor is formed between the base and collector. This diode prevents the transistor from becoming saturated, allowing it to switch faster. The resistance of an IC resistor is proportional to the length divided by the width. The sheet resistance of a material is measured in the unusual unit of ohms per square. You might think it should be per square nanometer or square mm or something, but since the resistance depends on the ratio of length to width, the unit cancels out.

The bias line is shared by all the cells. For reading, it is set to a low voltage. For writing, it is set to an intermediate voltage: higher than the data 0 voltage, but lower than the data 1 voltage. The bias voltage is controlled by the write enable pin. More advanced chips use two data lines instead of a bias line for more sensitivity. A differential amplifier to compare the currents on the two data lines and distinguish the tiny change between a zero bit and a one bit.

However, the uses such high currents internally that this isn't necessary; it can read the data line directly. If my analysis is correct, when a row is selected, the address decode logic raises both the positive row select and negative row select lines by about 0. Thus, the cell is still powered by the same voltage differential, but the voltage shift makes the data and bias lines active.

Address lines A3 and A2 are reversed in the decoding logic, presumably because it made chip layout simpler. This has no effect on the operation of the chip since it doesn't matter of the physical word order matches the binary order. The has a chip select pin that makes it easy to combine multiple chips into a larger memory. If this pin is high, the chip will not read or write its contents.

One strange thing about the address decoding logic is that each pair of address lines is driven by a NAND gate latch. There's no actual latching happening, so I don't understand why this circuit is used. How the implements this feature is a bit surprising.

The chip select signal is fed into the address decoding circuit; if the chip is not selected, both A0 and the complement A0 are forced low.

Thus, none of the rows will match in the address decoding logic and the chip doesn't respond. See the maintenance manual page As late as , the Interdata used chips to hold cache tags see manual page On the schematics note that part number indicates the See maintenance manual page This systems was unusual since it contained both an microprocessor and a TTL-based processor.

The metal layer of the chip is protected by silicon dioxide passivation layer. The professional way to remove this layer is with dangerous hydrofluoric acid. Instead, I used Armour Etch glass etching cream, which is slightly safer and can be obtained at craft stores. I applied the etching cream to the die and wiped it for four minutes with a Q-tip.

Since the cream is designed for frosting glass, it only etches in spots. It must be moved around to obtain a uniform etch. Next, I applied a few drops of hydrochloric acid pool acid from the hardware store to the die for a few hours. Moore's law not only describes the exponential growth in transistors per chip, but drives this growth. The semiconductor industry sets its roadmap according to Moore's law, making it in some sense a self-fulfilling prophecy.

See chapter 8 of Technological Innovation in the Semiconductor Industry for a thorough discussion. Wow I'm first! Thanks for another great article.

Congratulations for being the probably first person to publish high-res, multi-layer images of this rare chip to the internet. The is one of the simplest implementations of static ram arrays, since it holds only 64 bits and almost no other frills. It is a classic example of the bit-slice TTL processors from the period. You did a wonderful job of explaining it. Keep of the posts! What a great exposition of this interesting chip. I didn't know the Alto had four of these in it. Now all you need to do is run Sil on the Alto to create a layout thereby closing the circle.

Your reverse engineering articles are amazing! The detail, the photos. The fact that large swathes of modern processors consist of various levels of cache means that Intel is, once again, a manufacturer of static RAM. Great article. Actually, Intel's first RAM chip held only 63 bits.