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Instrumentation research
N e w link necessary says Intel 1978 is Intel's 10th year of existence and they have been celebrating worldwide. In the USA alone over 7000 people were invited to the parent company's celebrations last August. The theme Intel has adopted is '10 years of innovation' which is hard to dispute as they have been first with (to name but a few) the first 1 kbit silicon gate technology memory (1103), the first microprocessor (4004), and the first EPROM. Recalls Dr Gordon Moore, in charge of research and development when Intel began: 'At the time, cores, the dominant technology, were priced at 1 cent per bit and semiconductor memories were priced at $2.00 per bit. We had to develop a technology which would yield a two hundred fold decrease in semiconductor memory costs in order to become competitive'. Initially, the company produced small, fast memory devices with a new bipolar technology called Schottky TTL. Then in 1969, it produced its first silicon-gate MOS/LSI memory a 256-bit static RAM for small memory systems. This is the technology
with which Intel made the first successful 1024-bit RAM, the 1103. This device is generally considered the chip which initiated what is today, the $750 million MOS semiconductor memory market. Intel see their next 10 years growth as dependent upon a much closer relationship between themselves and customers. Something they feel is not happening as well in Europe as in the USA. European manager, Tom Lawrence, sees Intel in 1988 as a $2000M company if this new link between supplier and user can be established. Even without this prediction though, the growth rate of Intel to date is nothing short of spectacular. Starting with around £1M capital in 1968, they have grown to a 1978 turnover approaching £200M. This represents an annual growth of over 100%. A clue to their future was given by Lawrence. He sees the telephone becoming the central data/information terminal of the future for business users, and TV sets the central resource for home entertainment. Multimicroprocessing, as a technique of comput-
ing will become increasingly important, he believes. This is evidenced by the success of Intel's 80/05 and 80/20 SBCs which can be used together on the same bus and Intel's latest device, the 8086, which incorporates a more sophisticated mechanism for multiprocessor connection.
Instrumentation research LSI technology promises a new generation of process instrumentation. In response to this, a major programme of work aimed at accelerating the proper use of microprocessors in process instrumentation has been initiated as the Sira Institute, Chislehurst, UK. This development programme is partially funded by the UK Department of Industry. The new instruments, it is predicted, will calibrate themselves, check they are functioning properly, and will listen and talk to process operators and central computers over simple communications systems. They will communicate directly in a lan-" guage which expresses quantities in true physical units rather than arbitrary signal levels. They will have greater application flexibility, being based upon standard hardware modules dedicated to particular applications merely by inserting a chip containing the appropriate program. There are several problems to overcome, however, before this new generation of instruments become a reality. Much work must be done in training instrumentation designers and engineers, and in establishing sound concepts and principles for the design of microprocessor-based instrumentation.
USA invests S 1 5 0 M
Inte/'s founders, Andrew Grove, Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore
vol 2 no 6 december 78
The US Department of Defense is to spend a total of $150M on the further development of microelectronic technology during the next 6 years. This money wilt be spent in three areas: the development of highdensity chip pattern-making processes, design and test of very-high-speed VLSI circuits, and increasing the yield.
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with which Intel made the first successful 1024-bit RAM, the 1103. This device is generally considered the chip which initiated what is today, the $750 million MOS semiconductor memory market. Intel see their next 10 years growth as dependent upon a much closer relationship between themselves and customers. Something they feel is not happening as well in Europe as in the USA. European manager, Tom Lawrence, sees Intel in 1988 as a $2000M company if this new link between supplier and user can be established. Even without this prediction though, the growth rate of Intel to date is nothing short of spectacular. Starting with around £1M capital in 1968, they have grown to a 1978 turnover approaching £200M. This represents an annual growth of over 100%. A clue to their future was given by Lawrence. He sees the telephone becoming the central data/information terminal of the future for business users, and TV sets the central resource for home entertainment. Multimicroprocessing, as a technique of comput-
ing will become increasingly important, he believes. This is evidenced by the success of Intel's 80/05 and 80/20 SBCs which can be used together on the same bus and Intel's latest device, the 8086, which incorporates a more sophisticated mechanism for multiprocessor connection.
Instrumentation research LSI technology promises a new generation of process instrumentation. In response to this, a major programme of work aimed at accelerating the proper use of microprocessors in process instrumentation has been initiated as the Sira Institute, Chislehurst, UK. This development programme is partially funded by the UK Department of Industry. The new instruments, it is predicted, will calibrate themselves, check they are functioning properly, and will listen and talk to process operators and central computers over simple communications systems. They will communicate directly in a lan-" guage which expresses quantities in true physical units rather than arbitrary signal levels. They will have greater application flexibility, being based upon standard hardware modules dedicated to particular applications merely by inserting a chip containing the appropriate program. There are several problems to overcome, however, before this new generation of instruments become a reality. Much work must be done in training instrumentation designers and engineers, and in establishing sound concepts and principles for the design of microprocessor-based instrumentation.
USA invests S 1 5 0 M
Inte/'s founders, Andrew Grove, Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore
vol 2 no 6 december 78
The US Department of Defense is to spend a total of $150M on the further development of microelectronic technology during the next 6 years. This money wilt be spent in three areas: the development of highdensity chip pattern-making processes, design and test of very-high-speed VLSI circuits, and increasing the yield.
371