“By 1976, except for big data processing machines, no one will be designing in TTL.”
These were the words of, not surprisingly, an RCA guy, Joe Donahue, vice president for Europe in RCA’s Solid State Division, spoken in 1972.
RCA, at the time, was pioneering CMOS solid state technology. It made the industry’s first CMOS transistor (in 1963), and introduced the industry’s first CMOS chips (in 1968).
Heading up RCA’s solid state division at the time was Bernie Vonderschmitt, later to found Xilinx, and lead it to the No.1 slot in the programmable logic industry.
Back in 1972, Joe Donahue was bemoaning the lack of interest in CMOS among European design engineers.
“We have to get European engineers hooked on CMOS – to get them to try it out”, said Donahue, “Europe generally seems to be about 18 months behind the US in the use of complementary MOS.”
RCA estimated the 1972 European market for CMOS ICs as being worth $2m. It claimed a 50 per cent share market share.
Crystal Balls always seem to be a little foggy when they are used to predict the future. TTL experienced growth well past the 1976 prediction with the development of FAST and AS/ALS technologies that significantly extended the life of TTL products -- mostly in data processing applications, including PC's and mid-range computing applications of their time. CMOS has since replaced TTL as the predominant portion of the Logic market, but TTL products are still shipped today by Fairchild and TI.
More recently, through the late 80's and 90's, it had predicted that the Logic market itself would disappear, to be replaced by ASIC's and programmable products. In fact, CMOS logic volume has grown by 148% since 1997. Designers continue to use Logic, and as long as suppliers continue to innovate and offer value, designers will continue to do so in the future.
"It (RCA) made the industry’s first CMOS transistor (in 1963)"
Since CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide-Silicon) involves the use of both P-channel and N-channel transistors, in (usually) equal numbers, there is no such thing as the industry’s first CMOS transistor. I think 1963 was more likely the introduction of the first MOSFET transistor. Certainly, where I was working on ICs at that time, avoiding the "parasitic" MOS-effects was a big part of the process and layout design skill. Curious that after years of the most advanced CMOS technology actually using silicon gate devices ("CSOS"!), Intel's latest push is going back to metal gates (but also not an oxide insulator). "CMHS"?.