Logic Chips - Ancestors of the Microprocessor

About this Artwork This listing is for a mixed media artwork displaying the logic chips that preceded the microprocessor. As more and more transistors were squeezed onto silicon chips the power and functionality they provided increased dramatically. The ability of silicon chips to provide arithmetic and logic operations evolved from simple AND, OR, and NOT logic gate chips, to the Full Adder chip, and finally to the Arithmetic and Logic Unit chip. These advances in chip technology led to the development of the first microprocessor. Logics chips were the main building blocks of computers in the late 1960s, 70s and early 80s. One of the most famous computers of this period, the DEC PDP-8, used multiple 74181 ALUs as its central computing element. There were many manufacturers and technologies to choose from, and this competitive pressure drove the rapid advancement of chip technology. Transistor-to-Transistor Logic (TTL) came to dominate this period due to the availability of a wide rang