Influential chips

Apr 30 6:26pm

In an article simply made for me Spectrum makes a list of 25 microchips that shook the world. It’s an interestingly list alone and the stories behind the chips make it even better. I recognize most of them, having worked with a number of them which is actually quite astounding as they are mainly old designs. This is another illustration that good engineering can stand the test of time, as well as once you find something that works well you use it, becoming familiar with using it designs, and use it again and again down the line.

The complete (and unordered I think) list:

• Signetics NE555 Timer (1971)
• Texas Instruments TMC0281 Speech Synthesizer (1978)
• MOS Technology 6502 Microprocessor (1975)
• Texas Instruments TMS32010 Digital Signal Processor (1983)
• Microchip Technology PIC 16C84 Microcontroller (1993)
• Fairchild Semiconductor μA741 Op-Amp (1968)
• Intersil ICL8038 Waveform Generator (circa 1983*)
• Western Digital WD1402A UART (1971)
• Acorn Computers ARM1 Processor (1985)
• Kodak KAF-1300 Image Sensor (1986)
• IBM Deep Blue 2 Chess Chip (1997)
• Transmeta Corp. Crusoe Processor (2000)
• Texas Instruments Digital Micromirror Device (1987)
• Intel 8088 Microprocessor (1979)
• Micronas Semiconductor MAS3507 MP3 Decoder (1997)
• Mostek MK4096 4-Kilobit DRAM (1973)
• Xilinx XC2064 FPGA (1985)
• Zilog Z80 Microprocessor (1976)
• Sun Microsystems SPARC Processor (1987)
• Tripath Technology TA2020 AudioAmplifier (1998)
• Amati Communications Overture ADSL Chip Set (1994)
• Motorola MC68000 Microprocessor (1979)
• Chips & Technologies AT Chip Set (1985)
• Computer Cowboys Sh-Boom Processor (1988)
• Toshiba NAND Flash Memory (1989)

The ones I’m most familiar with are the indispensable 555 timer/astable multivibrator and the 741 op-amp. It would be shocking if they didn’t make the list. I’ve used both this year, despite them being on average four decades old. The 555 was just the trick for a XBox rapid fire button. And the 741 is my standard starting point for any analog op-amp needs. In college I became acquainted with ARM processors which make up a majority of the processors in the mobile world and the flexible Xilinx FPGAs.

Overall it’s a very representative list of the different things you can do with an integrated circuit: DSP, timing, communication, memory, analog, imaging, waveforms, speech generation, audio playback, micro and parallel processing.

I’m not sure if they missed any, although they do offer another group that didn’t make the cut. But if I did have to name one it would be the 595 shift register. I use them a lot and see them used widely for the common need to expand serial data to parallel, which comes in handy to expand the output lines for microcontroller projects.