The microprocessor is perhaps the most important development the electronics industry has seen for at least the last decade. It was introduced to meet the need for a universal large-scale integrated circuit brought about by the fairly high cost and narrow application of most LSI circuits.
So starts a story in Electronics Weekly's edition on Novemberb1975 in a section called 'Understanding Microprocessors' written four years after Intel introduced the first commercial microprocessor, the 4004.
The story continues:
'Semiconductor manufacturers have learned how to incorporate thousands of transistors on a single chip of silicon. Unfortunately, before the microprocessor, as the number of transistors on a chip increased, the more dedicated that chip became to a particular application and the smaller the potential market became for it.'
'Since the cost of an integrated circuit is related inversely to the production volume,' continues the story, 'LSI circuits for other than common applications tended to be more expensive than necessary because of the restricted market.'
'The microprocessor, with its ability to perform a wide variety of different functions, is the answer. It can be obtained at low cost, because its almost unlimited range of applications necessitates large volume production.'
I retired a couple of years ago after spending my life in the Electronics Industry - somewhat over fifty years. I think about this often and really do not agree. The Microporcessor was really the integration and continual integration of a 2 bit ALU.
In my opinion the greatest invention and inflection point in the industry over the past fifty years was the advent of solid state memory - RAM, ROM and EPROM. Without these non of the rest would have been possible.
Some of us remember core memory, CROS, TROS etc. Along came solid state memory and did away with the "wagon wheel" of the industry.
Do you type these old articles of yours in again or do you have them saved electronically ? (on 8" floppy discs :-)
I type them in, Mike, we haven't got anything electronically stored before about 1984.
Larry, I'm sure you're right. It's interesting that someone writing in 1975, four years after the marketing of the 4004 and the invention of the EPROM, and six years after the introduction of the 1101, could have assumed that the microprocessor was the 'most important advance of the previous decade'. Maybe Intel's marketing was as formidable a force in 1975 as it is today!