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Text of the page (random words):
2 this was upgraded to a 4 wafer system with features as small as 2u this was the design node that sandia used to make all the ic s used in the galileo space probe for its mission to jupiter this included the 1802 processor from rca sandia received the logic diagrams of the processor and its support chips and recreated them in a radiation hardened process how many ic s were needed over 50 000 for the probe itself backups testing chips etc sandia also produced various ic s for weapons systems and not things like tanks or planes or ships but weapons that need ic s that can handle intense radiation these were generally nuclear warheads reentry vehicles icbms and things along those lines sandia made the chips for them as well as maintains a war reserve stock of replacement ics for when they are needed in 1982 sandia began work on a cmos rad hard conversion of the intel 8085 processor this would become the sandia sa3000 converting the hmos intel 8085 to a rad hard cmos process took some doing the original 8085 had around 6500 transistors converting it to cmos resulted in a 18 000 transistor device one of the trickier conversions was the instruction decoder a large pla easy in nmos less so in cmos the sa3000 was made on 4 wafers on a 3u process sandia sa3000 lot g wafer 18 made in 1984 die size was 228 239 mils and it operated at 4 5 11v while maintaining compatibility at 5v for testing the increased voltage gives a lot more head room for radiation effects as radiation exposure tends to slow the max device speed down sandia also made a set of support chips for the sa3000 the sa3001 intel 8155 the sa3002 intel 8355 sa3026 intel 8212 and many others as needed sa3001 intel 8155 designing for radiation hardness is an art and a science much went into the design to make it work reliably the chips were made on a n on n epitaxial substrate to provide latchup control extensive guard rings around transistors were used and hardened oxides largely a process of controlling production temps contact of power to the substrate and ground to the guardband and p well is made as often as possible to further aid in latchup control what did this get sandia an 8085 processor that could handle 1 106 rads of radiation with only a 25 reduction in performance and 3 106 rads with a 40 drop the design goal was 1 105 so they greatly exceeded that anything over 1000 rads in generally fatal for humans w88 warhead control portion trident ii up to 8 sa3000 cpus the sa3000 was used and still is in the w88 475kt nuclear warhead used on the submarine launched trident ii it runs the main computer programmer responsible for altitude and fuzing calculations the sa3000 was also used by ball aerospace for a deep space star tracker design and used on the combined release and radiation effects satellite crres in 1990 to study the effects of high radiation on electronics the electronics on the crres worked fine but the battery failed after only a year causing an early mission failure harris sandia die cmos 80c85 intel 8085a die in around 1984 1985 the govt decided to bring in a contractor to run the fab much to the annoyance of sandia management and detriment to efficiency this would be allied signal who at that point had no experience running fab s this greatly slowed down production for some time harris hs1 80c85rh q serial 0001 the sa3000 and its support chips were commercialized by harris in 1990 as the hs1 80c85rh and the hs9 80c85rh these are similar to the sa3000 made on the same process but spec d with only a 5v operating voltage rather than 10v and a max speed of 2mhz rather then the 10mhz the sa3000 is capable of the hs1 is space grade with higher levels of screening and the hs9 is military grade but not screened to space use levels posted in cpu of the day april 1st 2026 by admin the forgotten ones actron am1608 16 bit cpu am1608 chipset 1979 synertek back in 1974 the us air force saw the beginnings of a problem as the switch to digital microprocessor controls took over fearful of being stuck with many unique systems requiring extensive software and hardware support the air force aeronautical systems division asd wants a standard device that could be applied across the board sounds familiar this same problem is what ended up leading to the mil std 1750a processor indirectly at the time though this was an air force only project other branches of course had their own the usaf called their standard the udam for universal digital avionics module like the 1750a it was to be a standard not an architecture companies could create whatever architecture they wanted however they wanted as long as it met the standard mcdonnell douglas md at the time a huge contractor for the air force as well as civilian airplanes decided to make an entry md had a captive company since 1972 called nitron to manufacture any semiconductors that md needed for their various planes etc nitron was famous for their work on memory notably earoms but they could make most anything md also had another division called actron in monrovia ca actron designed boards and chips for md and then nitron fab d them convoluted but such is the nature of such large organizations control chip die am1608 should be nitron production the design actron came up with went into production in early 1975 as the am1608 at nitron s fab in cupertino california it was a 16 bit design which was the requirement implemented in 3 chips there was a control chip and a pair of identical 8 bit arithmetic chips essentially a bit slice design as was fairly common in the 1970 s the am1608 had a fixed 16 bit instruction length but data words could be used from 8 80 bits actron hoped they could use sell this design for more than just the air force udam project the chips were initially fab d on a 5 micron nmos process with the control chip having 4413 transistors on a 25mm 2 die details on the arithmetic chip are unknown they could execute around 200 000 instructions per second at a 2 2 5mhz clock all benchmarks i have seen are at 2mhz so thats likely where is stayed and had 250 instructions available quite a lot for the time add sub took around 0 8 microseconds with a worst case mult instruction taking 6 8 microseconds these processors were designed primarily for math similar to the ga 16 from general automations each 16 bit processor could address 8k 16 bit words of instruction rom it was expected that the design would move to a silicon gate cmos process which would double its speed read more posted in cpu of the day august 16th 2025 by admin the general automation ga 16 16 bit cpu general automation ga 16 266a01 ralu and 267a02 crom general automation was founded in 1968 just prior to the beginning of the microprocessor boom of the 1970 s they were founded by burt yale a former aerospace engineer from the gemini space program and a former exec of honeywell larry goshorn by 1972 they went public and by 1974 were the 4th largest minicomputer make in the world and by 1986 they exited that business boom and bust was very much the the 1970 s for many companies though and while it was boom times general automation was pioneering in many ways in 1973 another well known semiconductor company was started synertek with funding from bulova watch company victor comptometer at t and general automation who needed a reliable source for memory chips for its computers at the time synertek would go on to source the custom cpu ga designed for their ga 16 minicomputer the ga16 was a lsi 2 chip version of their spc 16 line of computers that originally debuted in 1971 it was compatible with the original spc 16 line which helped it become quite popular ga marked the ga 16 in 2 main flavors originally the ga16 110 basic computer and the full of ga 16 220 which had an additional cpu board that added dma support and additional i o capabilities what made this mini computer interesting was that it was also available as a bare board an early single board computer with just the ga 16 processor this allowed it to be integrated into all sorts of industrial applications later version of the ga 16 cpu 1 board used extensively in industry read more posted in boards and systems cpu of the day march 16th 2025 by admin unknown and unobtainable mystery chips intel 60077 unknown there are always interesting surprises when collecting cpus and anything really there are those chips that are unicorns or white whales spoke of maybe even documented but never or almost never seen for example hitachi made a copy of the intel 4004 cpu its documented and i think i have seen one in my life but it s certainly not a chip that you ever expect to see it s almost i did say almost pointless to try to find one they are in a word unobtainium there are also chips that are completely unknown you can hold it in your hand and know it exists but not what it is for some manufactures of chips this is pretty common brands like lsi motorola and vlsi made a lot of fully custom devices there is no documentation of what these are who they were made for or anything else such documentation would have been for internal use only and likely destroyed or lost by now especially as companies went out of business or got acquired intel was a company not known for custom parts but it s a bit of their history that got a bit forgotten they of course like other companies custom marked parts for various companies with special part numbers or markings burroughs hp att etc they would also make a part for you with somewhat different specs custom testing or speed rating intel did make completely custom products at least through the 1980 s we discovered one of these back in 2020 the intel n60066 8051 based asic at least in the 1980 s intel custom parts tended to have a part number like 60xxx i am sure you could spec whatever you wanted but if you didn t intel would just sequentially assign them some of them may reuse intel ip intellectual property like a mcu core or ram rom or be completely custom to the customers needs intel 60077 die note the duplicated blocks appears to be random logic on the left this particular one is marked 60077 and a copyright of 1988 which is marked on the die as well its a sample and in a package that reflects that a gold lead cqfp164 lead package its likely the production part would be in something a bit more economical but that would also be spec d by the customer looking at the die it appears to have a pair of each block perhaps for redundancy its hard to say none of it matches anything i have seen before as far as a microcontroller or processor its function and customer are a mystery it is in a word an unknownium and thats part of the fun of collecting tags intel asic posted in cpu of the day february 13th 2025 by admin soviet s first planar integrated circuits copy it around the same time that nikita khrushchev declared his support for building zelenograd a soviet student named boris malin returned from a year studying in pennsylvania with a small device in his luggage a texas instruments sn 51 one first integrated circuits sold in the united states a thin man with dark hair and deep set eyes malin was one of the soviet union leading experts on semiconductor devices he saw himself as a scientist not a spy yet alexander shokin the bureaucrat in charge of soviet microelectronics believed the sn 51 was a device the soviet union must acquire by any means necessary shokin called malin and a group of other engineers into his office placed the chip under his microscope and peered through the lens copy it he ordered them one for one without any deviations i ll give you three months chris miller chip war the fight for world s most critical technology chapter 8 in 1961 fairchild semiconductor patented integrated circuit fabrication technology that revolutionized the electronics industry the central idea of this technology called planar in mathematics planarity means a geometric image that can be drawn on a plane without intersecting lines is that the design of an integrated circuit is initially represented as a set of drawings these patterns are then sequentially translated onto a semiconductor material crystal using various physical and chemical processes photolithography etc early ti photolithography process duplicated and enhanced by the soviet engineeris the main advantage of planar technology which caused its spread in semiconductor electronics is the possibility of using it as a method of mass manufacture of semiconductor devices and allows you to reduce the spread of their parameters keeping specs consistent from one device to another early ti assembly process in october 1961 texas instruments announced the creation of rctl resistor capacitor transistor logic sn51x logical planar integrated circuits and in 1962 began mass production of them the sn51xz line was an enhanced version of the previous released earlier that year sn50x line the sn51x provided more power for fanout and speed about 10x faster ti was the first to release six sn510 sn515 chips early sn51x series chips sold for over 400 when first released in 1961 dollars today around 4100 ti sn502 read more posted in research february 1st 2025 by admin fairchild pps 25 4 bit cpu for 25 digit precision it s been a long while since i have been able to post write having a new baby apparently does that i missed that in the datasheet since i have neglected posting or forgotten lets continues with the forgotten ones this brings us to 1971 fairchild after losing many employees in 1968 69 who went on to start world famous semiconductor companies intel and amd amongst others has decided to make their own processor system this was very early in the era of cpus you had the intel 4004 the ti tms1000 and various calculator type circuits the pps 25 is a 400khz 62 5us word cycle time 2 5us bitrate pmos processor organized into several different chips it is a 4 bit parallel with 25 digit serial data thus the name programmable processor system 25 each of those 62 5us cycles is also divided into 25 micro instructions of 2 5us now what would a 4 bit processor need 25 bit data precision the pps 25 was designed to fill the void at the time between high end calculator chips and actual mini computers the pps 25 systems core is the 3805 alu and the 3806 function timing chips the 3805 dip18 includes the adder subtractor as well as a 25 bit register the accumulator this accumulator was maskable as well allowing different parts of it to be operated on with a 6 bit mask this allowed a great amount of flexibility in programming the 3806 chip the largest of the chipset a dip24 contains the timing and control logic two 25 bit status registers branch logic the instruction address register and various other logic functions to support this core is a pair of register chips the 3808 and 3809 registers these are basic shift registers and each contain three 4 bit bcd parallel 25 digit serial register memories instructions are stored in up to 25 256 12 bit serial roms the...
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