'Ferranti is to launch a microprocessor chip early next year. The F100L, as it is to be called, has now reached the final stage of development And is expected to go into production at the Electronics Division Gem Mill plant in the near future.'
So starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition of October 22nd 1975.
'The 16-bit processor will be fabricated using Ferranti's unique collector diffusion isolation technology and is capable of addressing up to 2,000 words of memory directly, and 37,768 words indirectly.'
'The single chip device is to have a repertoire of 64 instructions and the clock rate will be 10MHz giving instruction times of between 300ns and 2.1 microseconds.'
I was surprised to see Ferranti exhibiting at this years DSEi show. I thought the name had disappeared for good but Ferranti Technologies appears to be alive and well following a management buyout from the bankrupt parent in '94.
Th story's 30 years old, Simon H, every Tuesday morning we do a post from our archive under the tag: 'Memory Lane'.
Great engineers created innovations that the business leaders entirely failed to capitalise upon.
Sad to say that Gem Mill is now a housing development and I understand that Landsdowne Road is being sawn up an posted to Taiwan in Jiffy bags.
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/216409
How right you are Sceptic, and how sad it is