integrated circuit

Overheard - 50th anniversary of the integrated circuit

The Computer History Museum is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the integrated circuit with a multimedia exhibit called “The Silicon Engine.” Dan Nosowitz, The First Integrated Circuit Chip: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary

How can you resist stopping to read about the Traitorous Eight?

Using oral histories from those who experienced the creation and development of the integrated circuit, the Computer History Museum compiled a documentary on this invention that irrefutably changed the world. The year-long exhibit will feature examples of early transistors, the vacuum tubes they replaced, and early integrated circuits, as well as explaining who was behind the inventions, especially the so-called “Traitorous Eight” engineers that largely developed the IC back in 1959.

Overheard: Memristor is the missing link of integrated circuitry

Electronic theorists have been using the wrong pair of variables all these years–voltage and charge. The missing part of electronic theory was that the fundamental pair of variables is flux and charge. Leon Chua as quoted in ‘Missing link’ memristor created: Rewrite the textbooks?

A memristor can be thought of as a resistor that changes its resistance depending on the amount of current that’s sent through it — and the big deal is that it retains its resistance even after the power is turned off.  Memristors are in the news again because engineers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed flexible memristor-like electronic memory chips.  It could be big news for consumer electronics because it opens up the possibility that memory chips can be printed just as simply and inexpensively as overhead transparencies.