Post #245,124
2/17/06 12:26:10 PM
|
Friday Silicon Trivia Challenge
Some easy, some that should be very hard. If you have to research (e.g. Google) to find answer, please note it.
1. Which was the first semiconductor company in silicon valley?
1b. What owners has it had?
1c. Which startups were founded by its employees?
2. What was TI's original business?
3. What markets did Intel invent?
4. What was the first microprocessor?
4b. Who ordered the first microprocessor?
4c. What product was it used in?
5. What is the most popular 32-bit architecture?
5b. About how many units of it will be shipped this year?
6. Who made the first DSP?
6b. What was the first successful DSP?
7. What is the first successful VLIW processor?
8. What was Intel's first 32-bit CPU?
8b. What clock rates were available?
8c. What were its companion chips?
9. What was the first personal computer?
9b. What processor did it use?
9c. If you wanted to add a FPU to it, what chip did Intel have available for its CPU?
10. What was Microsoft's first product? (No, it's not mugshots!)
11. What was Intel's first display co-processor?
12. Which semiconductor company was owned by a big oil company?
13. What was good about 6502 architecture? Why didn't it scale well?
14. What operating system did the Apple III run?
Have fun,
--Tony
|
Post #245,139
2/17/06 1:02:00 PM
|
Too hard! No googling; lots of fuzzy guesses enclosed.
1. Which was the first semiconductor company in silicon valley? Fairchild. I don't think HP could be counted as a semiconductor company at that time. 1b. What owners has it had? Noyce, Deal and Grove? Or do you mean other companies like Schlumberger? 1c. Which startups were founded by its employees? Intel and at least one other famous one whose name escapes me. Maybe MOSTEK? 2. What was TI's original business? Night vision goggles or something similar for the Army? 3. What markets did Intel invent? DRAM, CPU. Maybe bubble memory too. 4. What was the first microprocessor? Intel 4004. 4b. Who ordered the first microprocessor? Some Japanese company looking for a special purpose part. The guys at Intel convinced them that a general purpose processor would be better. 4c. What product was it used in? A dictation machine or something similarly mundane? 5. What is the most popular 32-bit architecture? Motorola 68000. 5b. About how many units of it will be shipped this year? 150 M or somesuch ungodly high number. They're very popular in automotive and similar industrial applications. 6. Who made the first DSP? TI's known for them, but I don't know if they were first. There might be some specialty company that was making their own programmable gate arrays with similar functionality before TI. 6b. What was the first successful DSP? The TI hitchitfachit. :-) 7. What is the first successful VLIW processor? It would just be a guess. Something from IBM in the lab, or maybe some Russian design. NOT the Itanium. But it depends on how you define successful. 8. What was Intel's first 32-bit CPU? The i860? 8b. What clock rates were available? 16 MHz? 33 MHz? 8c. What were its companion chips? Various math coprocessors, IIRC. 9. What was the first personal computer? ENIAC. ;-) Maybe the Altair, but I think it depends on how you define it. 9b. What processor did it use? I'd have to google. Some 8 bit non-Intel chip. 9c. If you wanted to add a FPU to it, what chip did Intel have available for its CPU? Which generation? 80287, 80387. I don't recall anything earlier than the 80287 from Intel. 10. What was Microsoft's first product? (No, it's not mugshots!) BASIC for the Altair, IIRC. Some sort of BASIC. 11. What was Intel's first display co-processor? I'd have to Google. I didn't think they did anything before adding some VGA helper logic to the 486, but they might have had something for the i860/i960 line. They've got slow stuff in their chipsets now, but I'd have to google for the name. 12. Which semiconductor company was owned by a big oil company? I can't dig it up in my head. Do you mean Fairchild and Schlumberger? 13. What was good about 6502 architecture? Why didn't it scale well? It could do some operation without touching the registers, or some such thing. There was an article on Woz that mentioned here about it a while ago, IIRC. It didn't scale because it was an ungodly primitive chip! :-) In other words, I'd have to Google. 14. What operating system did the Apple III run? AppleDOS? My recollections and guesses. What say you? Cheers, Scott.
|
Post #245,141
2/17/06 1:08:32 PM
|
1b. Owners = companies (Fairchild camera, Schlumberger etc)
|
Post #245,147
2/17/06 1:30:31 PM
|
More feedback
1. Which was the first semiconductor company in silicon valley?
Fairchild. I don't think HP could be counted as a semiconductor company at that time. Correct. 1b. What owners has it had?
Noyce, Deal and Grove? Or do you mean other companies like Schlumberger? Like Schlumberger - there are more, since it's gone from the SV original to a Maine-based company. 1c. Which startups were founded by its employees?
Intel and at least one other famous one whose name escapes me. Maybe MOSTEK? Intel is the most famous. 2. What was TI's original business?
Night vision goggles or something similar for the Army? Nope. 3. What markets did Intel invent?
DRAM, CPU. Maybe bubble memory too. DRAM was their original product (1103 IIRC) in 1968. CPU, too. Bubble memory is a good one. There are a couple more. 4. What was the first microprocessor?
Intel 4004. Correct. 4b. Who ordered the first microprocessor?
Some Japanese company looking for a special purpose part. The guys at Intel convinced them that a general purpose processor would be better. Right except for the name (so the first CPU wasn't really ordered as such). 4c. What product was it used in?
A dictation machine or something similarly mundane? Nope. 5. What is the most popular 32-bit architecture?
Motorola 68000. Nope 5b. About how many units of it will be shipped this year?
150 M or somesuch ungodly high number. They're very popular in automotive and similar industrial applications. Way low. 6. Who made the first DSP?
TI's known for them, but I don't know if they were first. There might be some specialty company that was making their own programmable gate arrays with similar functionality before TI. It was a big company (IIRC, two companies before TI). 6b. What was the first successful DSP?
The TI hitchitfachit. :-) Right company, wrong model. 7. What is the first successful VLIW processor?
It would just be a guess. Something from IBM in the lab, or maybe some Russian design. NOT the Itanium. But it depends on how you define successful. Successful = tens of millions sold. 8. What was Intel's first 32-bit CPU?
The i860? Not even close. 8b. What clock rates were available?
16 MHz? 33 MHz? Nope. 8c. What were its companion chips?
Various math coprocessors, IIRC. Nope. 9. What was the first personal computer?
ENIAC. ;-) Maybe the Altair, but I think it depends on how you define it. Personal = meant for a person to use, not an organization. 9b. What processor did it use?
I'd have to google. Some 8 bit non-Intel chip. Nope. 9c. If you wanted to add a FPU to it, what chip did Intel have available for its CPU?
Which generation? 80287, 80387. I don't recall anything earlier than the 80287 from Intel. Nope, this is a tricky one I don't think anyone will get. 10. What was Microsoft's first product? (No, it's not mugshots!)
BASIC for the Altair, IIRC. Some sort of BASIC. I think you're right. 11. What was Intel's first display co-processor?
I'd have to Google. I didn't think they did anything before adding some VGA helper logic to the 486, but they might have had something for the i860/i960 line. They've got slow stuff in their chipsets now, but I'd have to google for the name. Another one I don't think even Google will help you with (hint: it might involve green screen speedup). 12. Which semiconductor company was owned by a big oil company?
I can't dig it up in my head. Do you mean Fairchild and Schlumberger? Nope, Schlumberger is a oil field services company. I mean a member of "big oil". 13. What was good about 6502 architecture? Why didn't it scale well?
It could do some operation without touching the registers, or some such thing. There was an article on Woz that mentioned here about it a while ago, IIRC. It didn't scale because it was an ungodly primitive chip! :-) In other words, I'd have to Google. Not really. 14. What operating system did the Apple III run?
AppleDOS? Nope. My recollections and guesses. What say you? Cheers, Scott.
|
Post #245,198
2/17/06 6:39:11 PM
|
OK... No Googling.
1. Which was the first semiconductor company in silicon valley? Fairchild
1b. What owners has it had? Dunno
1c. Which startups were founded by its employees? National Semi, Intel
2. What was TI's original business? Instruments?
3. What markets did Intel invent? Have they invented any markets? News to me.
4. What was the first microprocessor? Intel 4004
4b. Who ordered the first microprocessor? Some Japanese company; Casio, Sharp, someone like that. Only it began with a 'B', I think.
4c. What product was it used in? A calculator
5. What is the most popular 32-bit architecture? Hmm... We're obviously supposed to say 80386 (=nowadays, Pentium, etc. "IA 32"), so that obviously isn't it. ARM?
5b. About how many units of it will be shipped this year? Hundreds of millions. Three hundred?
6. Who made the first DSP? Texas Instruments
6b. What was the first successful DSP? TI somenumber... "6000"?
7. What is the first successful VLIW processor? Whaddayamean, "is"? There hasn't been a really succesful Itanic yet... So you must mean its grandpa, the HP... Uh, I almost said "PA-RISC", but isn't that the old name for IBM's POWER? It's on the tip of my tongue, I swear! Or maybe it *is* PA-RISC, after all.
8. What was Intel's first 32-bit CPU? The 80386
8b. What clock rates were available? 12, 16, 20, 25, and finally 33 Mhz
8c. What were its companion chips? Plural -- you mean like a chipset, not a maths co-pro? No frigging idea; all I know is the 80387, so that's what I'll stick with
9. What was the first personal computer? MIPS Altair
9b. What processor did it use? A clone of an Intel or Motorola processor -- claiming it's OK to peek at these questions, I'll say of the Motorola 6502. Called Z-something; Zilog or Zylog?
9c. If you wanted to add a FPU to it, what chip did Intel have available for its CPU? Ah -- so the Z-thingy was a clone of the 8088, which would be what Intel could offer for an alternative CPU. (Or do you mean the 8087, which would be what they'd offer as a co-pro for the 8088/Z-thingy? It depends on how you meant to use the word "for" in your question.)
10. What was Microsoft's first product? (No, it's not mugshots!) A BASIC interpreter. (And/or compiler, possibly. But I think the interpreter came first, and compilers later.)
11. What was Intel's first display co-processor? What, they make/made those too? Or are you saying "CGA" (and later "EGA") was an Intel display co-processor?
12. Which semiconductor company was owned by a big oil company? Let's say that... Oh, one WAG is as good as another: AMD was once a subsidiary of Exxon?
13. What was good about 6502 architecture? It was right-way-aroundian, i.e, big-endian? Why didn't it scale well? Haven't the faintest.
14. What operating system did the Apple III run? Hmm... "Apple Graphics" something; the Lisa stuff that the Macintosh was supposed to be a stop-gap stand-in for? Naah, that wasn't the A3... And we're obviously not supposed to say Apple DOS either, are we...? I'll go with Digital Research CP/M, just because that makes the *least* sense, to me.
[link|mailto:MyUserId@MyISP.CountryCode|Christian R. Conrad]
(I live in Finland, and my e-mail in-box is at the Saunalahti company.)
Yes Mr. Garrison, genetic engineering lets us correct God's horrible, horrible mistakes, like German people. - [link|http://maxpages.com/southpark2k/Episode_105|Mr. Hat]
|
Post #245,222
2/17/06 8:06:34 PM
|
You must have had fun
1. Which was the first semiconductor company in silicon valley? Fairchild 1b. What owners has it had? Dunno 1c. Which startups were founded by its employees? National Semi, Intel 2. What was TI's original business? Instruments? Nope, Texas Instrumentas is in Texas, which is famous for.... 3. What markets did Intel invent? Have they invented any markets? News to me. I'm not a big Intel fan, but they really did do a lot of firsts, which started multibillion dollar markets: first commercial DRAM, first CPU, first bubble memory (well, that flopped), first EPROM, and at least one more. I think they were more innovative early on, and not very innovative in the past 10 years. In the early years, Intel had quite a few flops, too, including their first 32-bit CPU. 4. What was the first microprocessor? Intel 4004 4b. Who ordered the first microprocessor? Some Japanese company; Casio, Sharp, someone like that. Only it began with a 'B', I think. Yep, IIRC it was something like Bascom. 4c. What product was it used in? A calculator Right. 5. What is the most popular 32-bit architecture? Hmm... We're obviously supposed to say 80386 (=nowadays, Pentium, etc. "IA 32"), so that obviously isn't it. ARM? ARM is correct, by a wide margin. 5b. About how many units of it will be shipped this year? Hundreds of millions. Three hundred? Closer, but still low (many times the x86 volume0. 6. Who made the first DSP? Texas Instruments Nope. 6b. What was the first successful DSP? TI somenumber... "6000"? 320C10 7. What is the first successful VLIW processor? Whaddayamean, "is"? There hasn't been a really succesful Itanic yet... So you must mean its grandpa, the HP... Uh, I almost said "PA-RISC", but isn't that the old name for IBM's POWER? It's on the tip of my tongue, I swear! Or maybe it *is* PA-RISC, after all. Well, it's a DSP (which is still a processor) that totally kicked butt when it was first introduced (at a time when everyone thought VLIW was dead after the failure of Multiflow, etc). PA-RISC is superscaler, not VLIW. Considering the Itanic, maybe VLIW should've stayed dead outside of DSP. 8. What was Intel's first 32-bit CPU? The 80386 Nope. 8b. What clock rates were available? 12, 16, 20, 25, and finally 33 Mhz 8c. What were its companion chips? Plural -- you mean like a chipset, not a maths co-pro? No frigging idea; all I know is the 80387, so that's what I'll stick with 9. What was the first personal computer? MIPS Altair MITS Altair generally gets credit, although some dispute it. 9b. What processor did it use? A clone of an Intel or Motorola processor -- claiming it's OK to peek at these questions, I'll say of the Motorola 6502. Called Z-something; Zilog or Zylog? Nope. 9c. If you wanted to add a FPU to it, what chip did Intel have available for its CPU? Ah -- so the Z-thingy was a clone of the 8088, which would be what Intel could offer for an alternative CPU. (Or do you mean the 8087, which would be what they'd offer as a co-pro for the 8088/Z-thingy? It depends on how you meant to use the word "for" in your question.) Googling could get you the answer. 10. What was Microsoft's first product? (No, it's not mugshots!) A BASIC interpreter. (And/or compiler, possibly. But I think the interpreter came first, and compilers later.) 11. What was Intel's first display co-processor? What, they make/made those too? Or are you saying "CGA" (and later "EGA") was an Intel display co-processor? Something kind of interesting that I don't think anyone used. 12. Which semiconductor company was owned by a big oil company? Let's say that... Oh, one WAG is as good as another: AMD was once a subsidiary of Exxon? Since you got half right (Exxon), well, the other half is: Zilog. Zilog didn't do too well under Exxon, and is independent, small, but still surviving. 13. What was good about 6502 architecture? It was right-way-aroundian, i.e, big-endian? Why didn't it scale well? Haven't the faintest. 14. What operating system did the Apple III run? Hmm... "Apple Graphics" something; the Lisa stuff that the Macintosh was supposed to be a stop-gap stand-in for? Naah, that wasn't the A3... And we're obviously not supposed to say Apple DOS either, are we...? I'll go with Digital Research CP/M, just because that makes the *least* sense, to me. Nope
[link|mailto:MyUserId@MyISP.CountryCode|Christian R. Conrad]
(I live in Finland, and my e-mail in-box is at the Saunalahti company.)
Yes Mr. Garrison, genetic engineering lets us correct God's horrible, horrible mistakes, like German people. - [link|http://maxpages.com/southpark2k/Episode_105|Mr. Hat]
|
Post #245,631
2/21/06 4:00:16 PM
|
Intel was OO at the same time as Smalltalk
Some easy, some that should be very hard. If you have to research (e.g. Google) to find answer, please note it. OK, too many hard ones, although most answers are available via Google. 1. Which was the first semiconductor company in silicon valley? Fairchild, which was a division of Fairchild camera company (headquartered back east somewhere) 1b. What owners has it had? Fairchild Camera, Schlumberger, National Semiconductor, and now public, now based in Maine around a chip plant there, doing mostly analog and power. There might be more owners. 1c. Which startups were founded by its employees? Intel is the most famous. Most of the chip companies in Silicon Valley can trace their roots back to Fairchild (including Zilog, AMD, National Semiconductor, Maxim) 2. What was TI's original business? Oil field exploration. 3. What markets did Intel invent? At least commercial DRAM, CPU, DSP, EEPROM, bubble memory. 4. What was the first microprocessor? Intel 4004. 4b. Who ordered the first microprocessor? Bascom IIRC. 4c. What product was it used in? Calculator. 5. What is the most popular 32-bit architecture? ARM 5b. About how many units of it will be shipped this year? Two billion cores; biggest market is cellphones, others include home routers and PDAs. 6. Who made the first DSP? Intel (2910 IIRC). 6b. What was the first successful DSP? TI 320C10 7. What is the first successful VLIW processor? TI 320C6000 DSP. 8. What was Intel's first 32-bit CPU? One of my favorites - the [link|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i432| iAPX432] The Wikipedia article seems decent. The 432 was 32-bits internally, with 16-bit data bus, and was implemented in multiple chips. It had hardware support for object oriented programming; according to Wikipedia, the design started in 1975, right about the time Smalltalk was in use, so Intel was one of the first companies to promote OOP. It also had support for hardware fault tolerance, and everything else except the kitchen sink. Intriguing, but it ran really slow, and a faster but simpler architecture is definitely faster overall. 8b. What clock rates were available? 5, 7, 8MHz 8c. What were its companion chips? See Wikipedia article 9. What was the first personal computer? MITS Altair generally considered first, although there is some debate. 9b. What processor did it use? Intel 8080. 9c. If you wanted to add a FPU to it, what chip did Intel have available for its CPU? Intel 8231. I didn't even know Intel made a FPU before the 8087, but they did. The 8231 supported single precision floating point math, could work with most 8-bit processors, was in a 24-pin DIP package, and wasn't used much. 10. What was Microsoft's first product? (No, it's not mugshots!) BASIC for MITS sounds right. 11. What was Intel's first display co-processor? I was thinking of the 82730 text coprocessor which supported linked lists of text for faster text manipulation and display, proportional spacing, alphamosaic graphics, superscript/subscript, and soft fonts. It was available by 1984. The Intel 82720 display controller was probably sooner, and supported drawing characters, points, lines, arcs, and rectangles, as well as zooms and pans. However, it didn't support all the fancy text manipulation and display of the 82730. It's amazing how much Intel tried to do with hardware, at such an early time. 12. Which semiconductor company was owned by a big oil company? Zilog. 13. What was good about 6502 architecture? Why didn't it scale well? At a time when CPU's had few transistors, few registers and memory was faster than CPU's, it had a fast index mode (8-bit indexed addressing) so the first 256 bytes of memory could be used effectively as a large register file. But as CPU's got much faster than memory, going off chip more than absolutely necessary is a bad idea. 14. What operating system did the Apple III run? SOS. Have fun, --Tony See below
|
Post #245,633
2/21/06 4:05:19 PM
|
Thanks!
|
Post #245,680
2/21/06 8:26:22 PM
|
Nostalgia.
Intel is the most famous. Most of the chip companies in Silicon Valley can trace their roots back to Fairchild (including Zilog, AMD, National Semiconductor, Maxim) The Z80, for a long time a very very popular microprocessor was descended from the Intel 8080 and the Intel 8085. Zilog was started by someone from Intel. I heard the Z80 opcodes made a lot of sense if you looked at them in octal rather than hexadecimal. The Z80 is also the classic 8bit CISC micro-processor; it had instructions would could do block copies and searches, for instance. 13. What was good about 6502 architecture? Why didn't it scale well?
At a time when CPU's had few transistors, few registers and memory was faster than CPU's, it had a fast index mode (8-bit indexed addressing) so the first 256 bytes of memory could be used effectively as a large register file. ... But as CPU's got much faster than memory, going off chip more than absolutely necessary is a bad idea. TI did a similar thing with their 9900 architecture. The register file was actually in memory. It also had a kind of context jump which got you a new set of registers. It also didn't have a stack, instead storing return addresses in registers. This required some interesting and creative techniques for modular code. The 9900 also had an extremely well-organized instruction set. Wade. "Insert crowbar. Apply force."
|
Post #245,699
2/22/06 1:24:18 AM
|
Z80 lives!
Federico Fagin, one of the Zilog co-founders, was at Intel and was a major part of the Intel CPU team.
Zilog tried all kind of things (including Z800, Z8000, Z80000) before getting back to their old line: Z8 microcontrollers and Z80 microcontrollers. It looks like they're getting turned around; annual sales are around $100 million (compare to Intel, at over $30 billion). They are adding ARM9 microcontrollers for 32-bits.
The eZ80 (e.g. ez80F91) is based on the classic Z80 architecture, but with support for 16M memory, comes with 16K SRAM, 256K flash, Ethernet, and more. Zilog has a $100 development kit (including C compiler and RTOS), and it has a very active Yahoo! group.
By volume (and probably value), most microprocessors can trace their roots back to the 1970's - not just x86 and 68xxx (including the modern Coldfire RISC versions), but also the high volume 8-bit chips such as the Microchip PICs, Moto 68xx, and Intel 8051 (made by scores of companies). Note that neither the 6502 nor the TI 9900 survived.
--Tony
|
Post #245,712
2/22/06 6:38:47 AM
|
The 6502 and the 9900 were really historical oddities.
That's not to say they weren't individually brilliant, but the way they were designed and worked was intrinsically tied to 64K of the memory of the time.
TI never supported the 9900 properly. That's the main reason it's not around any more. I don't know about the 6502 - it probably died because it was really too simple.
Wade.
"Insert crowbar. Apply force."
|
Post #245,816
2/22/06 6:10:54 PM
2/22/06 6:11:22 PM
|
Apple chose 6502 because it was the cheapest . . .
Nothing like chosing an end of life chip to power a new product, but admittedly better Intel chips cost more and that might have compromised their 50% or greater profit margin rule (dealer profit was on top of that).
[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]
|
Post #245,857
2/22/06 10:22:22 PM
|
So did Commodore. And probably Atari.
The 6502 was a quarter of the size of the competing 6809 and therefore much cheaper.
Wade.
"Insert crowbar. Apply force."
|
Post #245,867
2/23/06 1:22:52 AM
|
It was also much easier to program.
Peter
[link|http://www.no2id.net/|Don't Let The Terrorists Win]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
|
Post #245,922
2/23/06 11:42:40 AM
|
That's what all the 6502 fan boys say
but I wasn't so impressed when I did 6502 assembly.
However, although it doesn't have the volume of the competition, it still lives, including the 16-bit 65816 version:
[link|http://westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/index.cfm|http://westerndesign...com/wdc/index.cfm]
--Tony
|
Post #246,031
2/24/06 9:21:41 AM
|
ICLRPD (new thread)
Created as new thread #246030 titled [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=246030|ICLRPD]
-----------------------------------------
NOTICE: Due to Presidential Executive Orders, the National Security Agency may have read this email without warning, warrant, or notice, and certainly without probable cause. They may do this without any judicial or legislative oversight. You have no recourse nor protection save to call for the impeachment of the current President.
-Put it on all your emails
|
