who, at the 1971 ISSCC, presented the first example of the new product category pictured below:
Fable: The First Of Its Kind
54 years ago, a new category of chip product was invented by this gentleman
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Nice one. The first EEPROM was invented by Eli Harari whilst at Hughes in California, and physically implemented then introduced by Hughes in the UK.
One early application for Hughes EEPROM technology was for car odometers. The dual-gate ( one connected, one floating ) trannys had a limited number of times that they could be programmed, so they were arranged as a gray-code counter in which every bit toggled with the same frequency. The 1km bit and the 100,000 km bits got the same amount of exercise. This prevented the instrument panel from being out-lived by the rest of the car.
Fascinating. Hughes first sold them stand-alone as NDRO (Non Destructive Read Out) Memories, still using the old core memory acronyms. Then moved into integrated ASICs, and provided a whole bunch of Odometer ASICs with EEPROM. I believe there were so many different applications in automotive, consumer, defence etc. Of course one of the first, if not the first company to use non-volatile to trim analogue parameters on-chip.
Intel 2kbit EPROM by Dov Frohman
Now a collectable via Ebay for approx. 130€
Seriously ? I’ve got a few stuffed away in the attic. Also some of its successors.
Spot on JM and zeitghost it’s the first EPROM invented by Dov Frohman at Intel in 1971
Apparently it’s an EPROM.