Silicone on Sapphire

[BarryMead]

(03-12-2016 03:03 AM)jjohnson873 Wrote:  I worked for RCA when they were manufacturing SOS technology in their Findlay, OH wafer fab. It was often used in space applications since it was resistant to SEU (single event upset) and it was a very low power process.

I remember the RCA 1802 "COSMAC" microprocessor. I designed many hardware devices using that CPU. It was fast, low power, reliable, and cost effective.
To call a subroutine you really just changed a 4-bit pointer that named a different one of the 16 general purpose registers as the Program Counter, and returning from the subroutine popped the original 4-bit value back so Subroutine nesting was very limited, but it was a novel simplistic innovative design concept that was hard to forget.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane.