Fun Stuff
In the 1980s Humphrey Products published a brochure titled: “How To Make an Integrated Circuit.” It’s still funny! Offered with the permission of Humphrey Products.
We have found a clean scan of the Signetics “Write-Only Memory” datasheet. A true classic!
In 2011 EDN’s Paul Rako posted a great compilation of April Fools’ and other pranks pulled by various well-known engineers in the semiconductor industry. It’s a wonderfully funny article that will waste a half hour of your time. In a later Electronic Design article in 2018 Rako adds a number of new pranks to his list.
Ron Neale shared a copy of the article he co-authored with Gordon Moore to describe the first Phase Change Memory (PCM or PRAM) way back in 1970. It’s amazing to view this as the foundation for Intel and Micron’s 3D XPoint Memory 45 years before its introduction!
Moore’s Law, originally presented in a 1965 article, is still good reading. Intel gives access to the original paper, and Auburn University has posted a copy of his follow-up ten years later, A site named LithoGuru has his 1995 thirty-year review of the phenomenon. All are worth reading. The Engineering and Technology History Wiki has posted the script and slides of Moore’s 2010 ISSCC keynote “No Exponential is Forever” which looks back at his predictions and compares them to how history evolved.