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Integrated Circuit Is 50 Years Old Today
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Sep 12, 2008 01:47 PM
from the looks-pretty-to-me dept.
from the looks-pretty-to-me dept.
arcticstoat writes "Today marks fifty years since the first integrated circuit, or microchip, was demonstrated by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments on 12 September 1958. The original chip might not be much to look at, but then Texas Instruments admits that Kilby often remarked that if he'd known he'd be showing the first working integrated circuit for the next 40-plus years, he would've 'prettied it up a little.' The integrated circuit itself was housed in a germanium strip on a glass slide, and it measured 7/16in by 1/16in. With protruding wires, and just containing a single transistor, some resistors and a capacitor, it's a primitive chip by today's standards, but it worked and successfully produced a sine wave on an oscilloscope screen at the demo. Technology hasn't been the same since."
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Gramm'e'r nazis enjoy! (Score:4, Funny)
IC your 50 years old...
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The IC powers spell check and grammar check software. It has almost completely eliminated the need for grammar Nazis.
O IC, whel thankz four taht.
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Perhaps you should go get your own phail pail there buddy.
Re:Gramm'e'r nazis enjoy! (Score:4, Funny)
You really should get that chip off your shoulder.
Parent
Uh oh (Score:5, Funny)
From TFA:
To commemorate Kilby's accomplishment and stimulate ingenuity, Texas Instruments will be canceling vacations for all of their employees.
Not a bad idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
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That would serve them right.
Do you realize that 40% of sick days at TI are taken on Mondays and Fridays?
Gotta... (Score:2)
I, for one, welcome our new^H^H^H^H 50 year old integrated circuit overlords.
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Microchip - aargh (Score:2)
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Because a microchip requires no context to tell you exactly what it is. A 'chip' has all kinds of meanings.
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If that's a microchip, a regular full sized chip must be about 8 foot long
I like SI too, but it isn't the be-all end-all of word formation. "Micro" is just the Greek word for "small" - it doesn't have to mean "exactly one millionth the size of a regular ...".
A "microscope" doesn't have to magnify things exactly one million times (most only do 10-400 fold), nor does it need to allow you to see things one micrometer in size (although some can). Likewise "microeconomics" doesn't imply that it deals with things exactly one millionth the size of "regular" economics.
So microchip doesn'
Jack Kirby? (Score:2)
Not quite... (Score:2)
But in a parallel universe where Japanese won the WWII - that might be true.
Only, the comic is caller Sirver Surfer there.
Incredible Hurk on the other hand... I don't think he ever made past issue #1.
Roswell (Score:2, Insightful)
Let me be one of the first to say... (Score:2)
For a laugh and some histoorical perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
For a laugh and some historical perspective, dig out the datasheet for a 555 timer. It's an ancient chip by any standards, but still extant. The designers were obviously rather proud of how many transistors this chip could replace (something like 25), and the datasheet is clearly bragging about this. In a modern context, this is pretty funny. Of course, designing a chip with that kind of lifespan is braggable.
The patentless 555 (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's an interview [semiconductormuseum.com] with Hans Camenzind, the said desinger of the 555. I thought this part was interesting:
There are no patents on the 555. Signetics did not want to apply for a patent. You see, the situation with patents in Silicon Valley in 1970 was entirely different than it is now. Everybody was stealing from everybody else. I designed the 555 Signetics produced it, and six months, or before a year later, National had it, Fairchild had it, and nobody paid any attention to patents. The people at Signetics told me they didn't want to apply for a patent, because what would happen if they tried to enforce that patent, is the people from Fairchild would come back with a Manhattan-sized telephone book and say "These are our patents, now let's see what you're violating". It was a house of cards - if you blew on it, the whole thing collapsed.
Parent
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Here's an interview [semiconductormuseum.com] with Hans Camenzind, the said desinger of the 555. I thought this part was interesting:
There are no patents on the 555. Signetics did not want to apply for a patent. You see, the situation with patents in Silicon Valley in 1970 was entirely different than it is now. Everybody was stealing from everybody else. I designed the 555 Signetics produced it, and six months, or before a year later, National had it, Fairchild had it, and nobody paid any attention to patents. The people at Signetics told me they didn't want to apply for a patent, because what would happen if they tried to enforce that patent, is the people from Fairchild would come back with a Manhattan-sized telephone book and say "These are our patents, now let's see what you're violating". It was a house of cards - if you blew on it, the whole thing collapsed.
Actually, that sounds exactly like patents in Silicon Valley right now. Many software companies are gathering defensive patents to countersue with, just like that interview describes. Interesting to see that the practice dates back to early ICs.
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It's not just the 555 either, although I suppose that's the one still in production in its purest form (the bipolar 555 is still made in quantities of hundreds of millions per year). 74 series is still in wide production (although in CMOS rather than TTL, with versions now capable of handling signals >!GHz), so is 4000 series CMOS (a handy family, while slow, it has a very wide voltage range), and so are more complex things like the Z80 CPU and 6502 - the 'classic' Z80 is still produced in 40 pin DIL (al
greatest invention (Score:4, Funny)
I was debating a coworker about the greatest invention of the 20th century, we both agreed that the miniskirt ranks higher than the transistor. It's interesting that they both came out around the same time.
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transistor: 1948
Miniskirt: 1968
I know it was a while ago, but 20 yrs is still kinda large time span.
You damn qubits! (Score:2)
Get off my lawn!
ah, not quite (Score:5, Informative)
The TI invention was not what we would consider an "IC". It had components, but it wasnt practical to mass produce. Not even TI followed up on its development.
The real practical IC, with photoetched traces on a planar silicon substrate was developed by Fairchild.
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The TI invention was not what we would consider an "IC". It had components, but it wasnt practical to mass produce. Not even TI followed up on its development.
The real practical IC, with photoetched traces on a planar silicon substrate was developed by Fairchild.
I never realized Morgan Fairchild was so intelligent.
can relat (Score:3, Funny)
I say teh same about my posts that git modded way up
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Now get off the IC's lawn you kids, and turn down that gosh-darned music!
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We'll see you in court.
--RIAA
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Your honour, the defendant Mr. Integrated Circuit has engaged in an extremely long, insidious campaign of technological progress designed specifically to undermine our business model. This latest misuse of our birthday song is only the recent end of a consistent pattern of abuse of our interests and rights as culture owners blah blah yackety schmackety.
What did our birthday boy do? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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Now, if only we could get greeting cards to sing that for us...
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what, you mean like a Walkman?
</conchord>
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You'll never shrink vacuum tubes down small enough to store an electronic copy of a song in a greeting card!
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Re:One understatement, comming up!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
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You're right. Correlation isn't causation. But correlation is nevertheless good EVIDENCE of causation. I'm sick and tired of people parroting "correlation is not causation" every time a correlation is used as evidence for causation.
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Indeed!
I'd add that correlation usually implies that there is some common cause which is a necessary condition of all the correlated events, even if it is not sufficient to cause all of them by itself.
People frequently loose sight of the fact that all "correlation != causation" is meant to indicate is that the common cause of correlated events is not required to be one the events themselves, but can be some other external event.
Whether the cause is bias in the measurement, direct/indirect causation, some re
Re:One understatement, comming up!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Secondly, correlation is pretty bad evidence of causation without something else backing it up. Correlations happen all the time for many reasons. There are many orders of magnitude more good correlations than there are causal relationships.
Parent
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Something else to back it up like another correlation?
How can you determine the cause of *anything* without a correlation?
It's just that some correlations have more/fewer variables to take into account to determine how much support it should have for a cause.
Re:One understatement, comming up!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Correlations can be used as supporting evidence, but they're weak to the point of ridicule by themselves. I can't believe this is even an argument on a forum of educated people. The scientific method, at its core, is a method used to remove the uncertainty from correlations in the data so that you can say with confidence that either the correlation in the data is a cause and effect relationship or that the experiment was set up improperly. Perhaps, instead of bitching about correlation not being accepted as evidence of causation, you should praise people for having the skepticism that's driven the scientific revolution of the past few centuries.
Parent
Re:One understatement, comming up!! (Score:5, Funny)
correlation != coincidence as well.
Other coincidences abound, such as the fact that human flight became viable around the same time as the advent of the aeroplane.
Parent
Re:One understatement, comming up!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:One understatement, comming up!! (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe not, but think of the Polar Bears. Global warming would have wiped the arctic off the map decades ago if we were still limited to 'valves'. But OTOH, iPods would just sound a lot better.
Parent
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Duh. That vac tube powered cell phone is not only a phone, it's a portable furnace!
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Please, go ahead. The rest of us will be reaping the benefits of miniaturization.