The birth of the Soviet missile defense system. How the USSR copied microcircuits

Simply put, there are two large categories of transistors: historically the first serial - bipolar transistors (bipolar junction transistor, BJT) and historically the first conceptually - field effect transistors (field-effect transistor, FET), and the logic elements assembled on them, in both cases, can be implemented both in discrete form and in the form of integrated circuits.

For bipolar transistors, there were two main manufacturing technologies: a primitive point (point-contact transistor), which had no practical application, and the technology of transistors on pn junctions (junction transistor).

In turn, junction transistors consisted of three main technological generations (depending on how the junction was formed): transistors with a grown junction (grown-junction transistor, original work by Shockley, 1948), , RCA and General Electric, 1951, developed in MAT / MADT technology from Philco and PADT from Philips) and the most advanced, diffusion-obtained junction transistors (diffused-base transistor from Bell Labs, 1954, more advanced mesa transistor from Texas Instruments, 1957, and finally planar transistors from Fairchild Semiconductor, 1959).

As exotic options, there were also surface barrier transistors (surface-barrier transistor, Philco, 1953), it was on them that the computers MIT Lincoln Laboratory TX0 and TX2, Philco Transac S-1000 and Philco 2000 Model 212, Ferranti-Canada were created DATAR, Burroughs AN/GSQ-33, Sperry Rand AN/USQ-17 and UNIVAC LARC!

Drift-field transistors (German Postal Service Central Bureau of Telecommunications Technology, 1953) were also known, they were used in the IBM 1620 (1959) under the name Saturated Drift Transistor Resistor Logic (SDTRL).

For the production of microcircuits, three variants of junction transistors were suitable (in theory) - alloy, mesa and planar.

In practice, of course, nothing happened with alloys (only the paper ideas of Jeffrey Dummer, Bernard Oliver and Harvick Johnson, 1953 remained), with mesa transistors, a miserable hybrid TI 502 from Jack Kilby turned out, and there were no more willing to experiment, and the planar process, on the contrary, went perfectly.

The first planar microcircuits were Fairchild Micrologic (the same ones used in the Apollo Guidance Computer and the obscure AC Spark Plug MAGIC and Martin MARTAC 420) and Texas Instruments SN51x (used in the NASA Interplanetary Monitoring Probe computers and Minuteman II rockets), both appeared in 1961 .

In general, Fairchild made good money on the Apollo program - for all computers, in total, NASA purchased more than 200 chips for $ 000-20 each.

As a result, both planar bipolar transistors and microcircuits based on them were used for the production of computers throughout the 1960s (and microcircuits throughout the 1970s).

For example, the great CDC 6600 was assembled in 1964 on 400 Fairchild 000N2 silicon bipolar transistors, manufactured using the most advanced epitaxial planar technology and designed for an ultra-high frequency of 709 MHz.

A Brief History of Logic

How were logical cells organized at that time?

In order to assemble a computer, two things are needed.

First, you need to somehow assemble the logic circuit itself on keys that can be controlled.

Secondly (and this is no less important!), you need to amplify the signal of one cell so that it, in turn, can control the switching of others, this is how complex arithmetic-logical circuits are assembled.

In the historically first type of logic - resistor-transistor logic (RTL), the same single transistor was used as an amplifier, which served as a key, there were no more semiconductor elements in the circuit.

The RTL cell looks as primitive as possible from the point of view of electrical engineering, for example, here is the classic implementation of the NOR element.

A table showing how the NOR cell works, and two possible implementations - the most primitive, two-input 2-NOR, and three-input 3-NOR. The Raytheon Apollo Guidance Computer was assembled with 4 of these 100-NOR chips from Fairchild Semiconductor. The second version, already for manned flights, was improved to 3 chips, each of which combined two 2-NORs.

AGC is the most famous RTL computer in the world. On the right is Margaret Hamilton, one of the developers of the Apollo mission software (https://wehackthemoon.com, https://www.theatlantic.com).

Naturally, with the help of RTL it is possible (and necessary!) to implement other constructions, for example, triggers.

The first transistorized computer, the MIT TX0, was assembled in 1956 using discrete RTL transistors.

In the USSR, RTL formed the basis of the first Osokin microchips, which we already wrote about - P12-2 (102, 103, 116, 117) and GIS "Tropa-1" (201).

RTL was cheap and simple, but had a lot of disadvantages: high power, which led to increased heating, fuzzy signal levels, low speed, low noise immunity and, most importantly, low load capacity of the outputs.

The RCTL (resistor-capacitor-transistor logic) variant had a higher speed, but it was even less noise-resistant.

Despite the appearance of more advanced series, RTL was used and produced until 1964.

One of the most popular was the Fairchild MWuL series and the slightly faster uL. These two groups, complementing each other in terms of characteristics, consisted of about 20 types of ICs and were produced in large quantities for three years.

In the USSR, they were cloned around 1966, and various versions of the monstrously antediluvian RTL were produced until the mid-1980s, if not further.

The development took place according to the classics, with everything appropriate, as was customary in the USSR from time immemorial (writes about the 111th series famous collector and historian of electronics):

A very rare unpackaged RTL logic, one of the first domestic logic series (the theme "Microwatt"), developed in KB-2 by F. G. Staros. Initially, it was produced under the pre-GOST name TIS. History its development is not devoid of strange moments and white spots. Presumably, initially Staros in the mid-60s developed 1LB111–1LB113 with sorting by input / output current and propagation time.
Then (approximately at the very beginning of the 70s) 1LB111–1LB113 appear, which are rejected by almost the same parameters, but in absolute terms they have noticeably better characteristics. For example, the propagation time was 600/650 ns, and became 100/400 ns. They have found application, for example, in hybrid microcircuits of the 207 series - probably when replacing a basic logic element assembled on discrete transistors.
But rather quickly, by 1973, the release of the high-speed version was discontinued, and 1LB112 + 1LB113 also left the stage.
The situation has returned to its original state. What this second adventurous option means is now rather difficult to ascertain, but there may have been two developers. Then the story makes some sense. Apparently, the developer of a faster version was rotten by 1973, which is consistent with the history of Staros Design Bureau.
Cherry on the cake in the catalog of 1976, 1LB113 reappears from somewhere ...

We note an extremely important point for further reasoning.

Logic type is a concept applied to the circuit design of a logic element, not to its specific implementation!

RTL can be implemented both on discrete elements and in a microcircuit variant. In fact, you can even replace the transistor with a lamp and get a resistor-coupled vacuum tube logic - such was used by the world's first prototype electronic computer - the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (1927–1942). The RTL variant can be found in the very first chips - Fairchild Micrologic, and the RCTL variant - in TI SN51x.

The famous space series RTLC TI SN51x. The microcircuits themselves, their internal structure and the Minuteman II control unit with the Autonetics D-37D Missile Guidance System Computer on them (https://minutemanmissile.com/, http://ummr.altervista.org, https://www.petritzfoundation .org)

The load capacity is critical for creating complex circuits - what kind of computer will turn out there, if our transistor cell is capable of swinging a maximum of 2-3 neighbors, you can’t even assemble an intelligent adder. The idea arose quite quickly - to use a transistor as a signal amplifier, and to implement the logic on diodes.

So a much more advanced version of logic appeared - diode-transistor (diode-transistor logic, DTL). The DTL bonus is high load capacity, although the speed still leaves much to be desired.

It was DTL that was the basis of 90% of second-generation machines, for example, the IBM 1401 (a slightly modified proprietary version of complemented transistor diode logic - CTDL, packaged in SMS cards) and heaps of others. There were hardly fewer options for the circuitry implementation of the DTL than the machines themselves.

An elementary DTL NAND cell and a logical block from BESM-6 on a perverted ECL modification for comparison (https://1500py470.livejournal.com).

Naturally, you can do without transistors, then you get diode vacuum tube logic (an extremely popular solution in the early 1950s, almost all machines that are commonly called tube machines actually had diode logic circuits, and the tubes did not calculate anything, they just amplified the signal , a textbook example - Brook's M1).

Another exotic option by today's standards is purely diode logic (diode-resistor logic, DRL). Invented at the same time that the first industrial diodes appeared, it was widely used in small machines of the early 1950s, for example, the IBM 608 calculator and the Autonetics D-17B on-board computer from the famous Minuteman I rocket.

Prior to the invention of the planar process, transistors were considered unsuitable for critical military applications due to potential unreliability, so the Americans used DRLs in their first missiles.

The Soviet answer Minuteman I used a tube computer, and the R-7 rocket (including due to the larger size of all other components) turned out to be monstrously huge compared to the American one: the Yankees have about 29 tons and 16,3x1,68 meters against an incredible 280 tons and 34x10,3 meters. Even the monstrous LGM-25C Titan II had a size of 31,4x3,05 meters and a mass of 154 tons, in general, Soviet ICBMs have always been much larger than American ones, due to the backwardness of technology.

As a result, for example, as a response to the compact Ohio class SSBN, the chthonic 941 Shark had to be developed - in a boat the size of the Ohio, Soviet missiles simply would not fit.

In addition to computers, DRL has been used for decades in all kinds of factory automation.

Classic DRL - AND-OR cell, one board from Autonetics D-17B and the computer itself (https://minutemanmissile.com, http://www.bitsavers.org)

Transistor logic also found its way into ICs, starting with the 100 Signetics SE1962 chips.

A little later, DTL versions of the chips were released by all the major players on the market, including Fairchild 930 Series, Westinghouse and Texas Instruments, which developed the D-37C Minuteman II Guidance Computer on them in the same 1962.

In the Union, DTL microcircuits were produced in huge quantities: series 104, 109, 121, 128, 146, 156, 205, 215, 217, 218, 221, 240 and 511.

Preparing for the production of DTL was also not without Soviet adventures.

Yury Zamotailov recalls, p. n. With. Department of Nuclear Physics, VSU:

In 1962, department No. 8 (head of department Khoroshkov Yu.V.) asked the chief engineer Kolesnikov V.G. for a lot of money for the plant of that time to purchase an electron gun. The goal was noble - to make diodes on it using an incredibly simple (and, therefore, cheap) technology - analogues of the D226 needed for the country. The technology is really simple: plate oxidation, aluminum deposition, electron beam firing, scribing and assembly.
I don't want to make excuses for the failure, but for the general idea I will say that a cubic vacuum chamber, approximately 3 m3, protected by 5 tons of lead from secondary X-rays, was purchased from NIIAT in Moscow.
She was famous for the fact that Valery Bykovsky performed with her after the flight into space. So for the operators to load parts into it, it was equipped with a ladder about three meters high. According to the passport data, the electron beam could be focused to a diameter of 100 μm.
A two-year adjustment by NIIAT specialists and us gave a beam with a minimum diameter of about a millimeter. Suffice it to say that the beam was tuned and controlled using 148 LATR-2 type transformers.
In short, the gun had to be transferred to the Polytechnic Institute.
Do you represent our state of mind?
In the department, some simply stopped saying hello. Khoroshkov Yu.V., passing by, looked through us.

I wonder why Zelenograd constantly bought equipment from the West?

Maybe due to the fact that Soviet installations were only suitable as props for films about Dr. Frankenstein?

As a result, everyone scored on diodes and decided to assemble microcircuits right away (if you can get Western steppers).

Started cloning DTL.

But what kind of scheme to make?
To be honest, the circuit engineers among us are useless. In one of the magazines, they found a DTL scheme with nine components. By adding a diode to its input, we got the same TS-1.
<...>
Arriving once again to us, Shokin A.I., as always, accompanied at that time by the first secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU SD Khitrov, in the evening, in a narrow circle, got acquainted with the progress of work. Then the question of submitting the research work "Titan" to the State Commission was raised ...
I will never forget Shokin's words: “Men! December 31, at least under the most 24 hours, to my house, but bring the current scheme. Khitrov S.D. sits and says: “And I have one!” I even shuddered. I think: “But why should you?! God forbid that one will turn out, proving that the technology is fundamentally developed.
Nevertheless, Khitrov's phrase had its effect.
After a pause, the minister said: "Indeed, one sample somehow does not sound." And, excuse me, after half an hour of trading, we agreed that 10 samples would be presented to the State Commission. We remembered Khitrov for a long time and forgot only after the State Commission submitted the topic.
I will never forget the day when, finally, the first crystal (entirely!!!) flickered.
It was a great joy for the team, which, sorry, I can’t describe.
It happened in the middle of November. There were 1,5 months left, and 9 more pieces had to be made!
And although due to ultra-intensive work we ran a batch of plates of 15–20 pieces in 4–5 days, and the batches were launched daily, as is often the case in life, a real losing streak set in. For almost a month there was not a single whole crystal.
Thank God, somewhere in the middle of December, out of two or three batches, I. A. Arakcheeva collected 7 crystals and assembled them into cases. To be honest (now we can admit it), the State Commission was presented with 10 measuring blocks, in which eight had diagrams, and two were empty cases. But the State Commission was satisfied with the measurements of the two schemes.
<...>
We must pay tribute to VG Kolesnikov in understanding our problems.
He knew perfectly well that on the equipment on which part of the R&D was mainly carried out, it was out of the question to perform R & D, to organize mass production. Another 6 months before the end of the research, we learned out of the corner of our ear that the deputy chief engineer Lavrentiev K.A. had left for Japan, however, for what purpose we were not very aware ...
A couple of weeks after that, we rushed to unpack the ovens brought by Lavrentiev from Japan. These were the famous SDO-2, which literally saved us. We got them just at dead end time.
Thus, Kolesnikov V.G. asked for currency in advance and agreed on the supply of equipment (along with the furnaces, some equipment was received using photomasks and photolithography).
<...>
We took A. I. Chernyshov from the graduate school of the Voronezh State University to the laboratory over the limit, moreover, as a senior engineer. I, knowing him even earlier, did not give him any group (and he did not ask), but instructed him to work with contacts. For two months, two and a half, as we said then, no return.
And then one day he called me, says: “Look!”
We checked the crystal, there is no contact at the input of two diodes, the circuit itself, of course, does not function. Then he puts the plate on a homemade flat stove, heats it up to 470 degrees and stands for 15 minutes. After that, on this plate we find two functioning circuits, on the other (similar) - 3, etc.
So the mode for burning aluminum was found.
After all, before that, aluminum was burned at a temperature of 300 degrees, using secret messages received through the 1st department, which turned out to be disinformation ...
The thought involuntarily arose, what schemes did we present to the State Commission? Accidentally obtained?!

Various variants of standard cards (usually 1 card = 1-2 NAND or NOR type elements) from transistor machines of 1960-1970 represent all discrete logic variants - DTL, TTL, ECL (photo courtesy of http://ummr. altervista.org) /size]

So Soviet microelectronics was born in agony.

On what Elbrus-1 was assembled

Finally, the king of logic, which became the gold standard before the era of microprocessors, is, of course, transistor-transistor logic (TTL).

As the name implies, transistors are used here to perform both logic operations and signal amplification. The TTL implementation requires replacing the diodes with a multi-emitter (typically 2–8 emitters) transistor.

TTL was invented in 1961 by James L. Buie of TRW, who immediately realized that it was the best fit for integrated circuits that were just appearing in those years. Of course, TTL can also be implemented discretely, but unlike DTL, its fame came with the rise of the IC.

Already in 1963, Sylvania released the first set of Universal High-Level Logic family chips (SUHL, used in the AIM-54 Phoenix rocket for the Grumman F-14 Tomcat fighter), built on a transistor-transistor circuit. Literally immediately after Sylvania, Transitron released a clone of their family called HLTTL, but the main event was ahead.

In 1964, Texas Instruments released the SN5400 series for the military, and in 1966, the SN7400 variant in a plastic case for civilian use (the SN8400 series, which was medium in terms of survivability between them for industrial use, was briefly produced for a short time).

It cannot be said that 54/74 had some incredible parameters, but it was well chosen in terms of elements and, most importantly, it had incredible advertising.

In general, TI was a kind of Intel of the 1960s - the main trendsetter in the IC market (mainly due to the incredibly slow politics of their main competitor Fairchild and monstrous patent wars, and not the special talent of developers).

As a result, just a couple of years later, the 7400 series was licensed by dozens of companies - Motorola, AMD, Harris, Fairchild, Intel, Intersil, Signetics, Mullard, Siemens, SGS-Thomson, Rifa, National Semiconductor, and stole the entire Social Block - the USSR, East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and even the PRC, and it has become the same standard as in the 1980s x86 architecture.

The only firm that didn't fall for TI's propaganda was, of course, IBM, a corporation-state that did everything itself.

As a result, until the mid-1990s, they produced absolutely original TTL chips of their own, incompatible design, and used them in the IBM System / 38, IBM 4300 and IBM 3081.

Typical MST module (Monolithic Systems Technology) from IBM S/370 and its contents (https://habr.com)

It is also interesting that the 7400 series was actually not entirely honest TTL logic.

From the advanced 74S (Schottky TTL) series of 1969 and onward to the 74LS (Low-power Schottky), 74AS (Advanced-Schottky), 74ALS (Advanced-Schottky Low-power) and 74F (Fast Schottky) released in 1985, microcircuits do not contain a multi-emitter transistor at all - instead of it, Schottky diodes are used at the inputs.

As a result, technically, this is a real DTL (S), called TTL, purely so as not to confuse the consumer and not interfere with business.

TTL and TTL(S) were devoid of almost all the shortcomings of the previous families - they worked fast enough, were inexpensive, reliable, heated little and had a high load capacity. TTL microcircuits, depending on the type, contained from tens to thousands of transistors and were elements from the most primitive logic gate to an advanced military BSP.

Elementary NAND-cell TTL-logic

The Kenbak-1, the ancestor of all PCs, used TTL for its processor in 1971.

The legendary Datapoint 2200 terminal of 1970 also worked on them (moreover, this set later served as a prototype for the Intel 8080 architecture). Xerox Alto workstations of 1973 and Star of 1981 also had processors assembled from discrete TTL microcircuits, however, already at the scale of a bit-slice processor.

Almost all computers until the mid-1990s used TTL chips in one form or another in non-performance-critical moments, as part of various bus controllers, for example.

In addition, before the advent of FPGA matrices, TTL chips were actively used for prototyping microprocessors (the coolest thing here was just Elbrus - before releasing its normal version, ITMiVT, in fact, prototyped an entire machine on TTL, which it even sold separately ).

The first PC in the world, the baby Kenbak-1, created by John V. Blankenbaker in 1971. About 40 computers were produced. Now the surviving copies are worth about $ 500. The 000 Xerox Alto is the world's first workstation with a graphical OS, mouse, WYSIWYG editors and OOP as a standard programming tool. In fact, Alto does not differ from a modern PC in any way, except for performance. The processor is assembled on 1973 TI SN4, forming a 74181-bit BSP (https://t-lcarchive.org, https://16dnews.ru, https://habr.com)

Initially, TI released the classic 74 series and the high-speed 74H variant with a typical latency of just 6 ns.

The load capacity was 10 - an excellent result, allowing you to assemble quite complex circuits.

The case was the simplest - DIP14, the series included 8 of the simplest (NAND type) microcircuits. A little later, the nomenclature was expanded (as well as package types, 16 and 24 pins were added) and a low-power version appeared - 74L, slowed down to 30 ns per cycle.

The first series with Schottky diodes, 74S, was released in 1971, its speed increased almost to the level of the Soviet ECL - 3 ns. In the mid-1970s, a low-powered 74LS appeared (at the same speed as the usual one, the 74th power was reduced by 5 times).

In 1979, Fairchild decided to put in their 5 cents and created the 74F series using proprietary Isoplanar-II technology (deep selective oxidation that provides side insulation of elements instead of pn junctions), which they used for everything in general.

This made it possible to take the desired barrier of 2 ns and at the same time sharply reduce the power (by the way, for Soviet TTL clones, all delays can be safely multiplied by 2–3).

Texas Instruments were transported until 1982, when they finally mastered the 74ALS and 74AS series of almost the same parameters. The 74AS was even a little faster than the Fairchild version, but it warmed up twice as much and was not successful, but the 74ALS was very popular.

Finally, the TTL swan song was the 1989Fr series created by Fairchild in 74, which was 1,5 times faster than the 74F and heated similarly 1,5 times more, so it was quickly discontinued.

74ALS, on the other hand, was stamped right up to 2019 and used in a bunch of small automation and electronics. There was also a version of SNJ54 - radiation-resistant for space use.

Golden immortal classics - 16-bit TTL-loose processor TI SN74xx. This is what the processors of 90% of machines looked like in 1965-1975. Specifically, these boards are the EAU (Extended Arithmetic Unit) model 8413 (released in 1974) for Data General NOVA minicomputers (an approximate analogue in the DEC PDP-11 class) and their Eclipse family (S200, S230, C300, C330). The processor (which would now be called the FPU) was assembled as a BSP on 74181 chips. It was also compatible with General Electric Medical Systems machines developed from Data General (http://ummr.altervista.org).

By 1967–1968, there were no TTL chips in the Union.

That is why, including ES computers, and Kartsev's M10, and Yuditsky's 5E53, they developed for the most powerful that was available - a variety of GIS. BESM-6 and 5E92b were generally transistorized, like all civilian vehicles. Even the prototype of the portable computer 5E65 (the ideas of which Burtsev borrowed for 5E21 later), released in the amount of three pieces, from 1969 to 1970 was also transistorized.

However, as we remember, in 1967-1968. a decision was made to develop the S-300 complex, and at the same time ITMiVT orders the cloning of the TI 54/74 series.

At the same time, the Ministry of Radio Industry takes over all the developments related to missile defense, and at about the same time, Burtsev's concept of Elbrus was born.

As a result, a decision is made to start architectural research in the field of 2 vehicles at once - for portable air defense (5E26) and for stationary missile defense (Elbrus). In parallel, it is planned to develop the long-awaited TTL chips, study the possibilities of producing ECL chips and create two computers.

As we know, in practice, everything did not go as planned, and the much more primitive 5E26 was completed only after 8 years of development, and the much more sophisticated Elbrus was mass-produced in the TTL version only by the mid-1980s (and the ECL- option by the early 1990s), ruining the project for 20 years.

The development of the Soviet TTL was also significantly influenced by the second, after ITMiVT, a serious player that arose by 1969 - NICEVT, which developed the EU series (and we will talk about its huge role in the development of Soviet ECLs in the next part).

Few people know, but in the golden years of 1959-1960, not only Russians went to the Americans, but also the Americans to us!

In particular, in 1960, the famous engineer and inventor from Texas Instruments, director of instrument research under the leadership of Gordon Teal, Dr. Petritz (Richard L. Petritz), one of the fathers of SN51x, came to the International conference on semiconductor physics in Prague in XNUMX.

From Czechoslovakia, he went to Moscow, where he visited Soviet laboratories, shared his experience and discussed semiconductor physics.

Thus (taking into account Staros and Berg) almost all Soviet microelectronics was founded with the active and rather friendly participation of the Americans.

By 1969, the development of the famous 133 series was completed - a clone of the SN5400 in a planar design for the military (R&D "Logic-2").

From that moment, the entire line of microcircuits from TI was gradually copied:

It was on this series that Elbrus-1 was created.

Like many in the 1990s, Burtsev suddenly found out that the founders of Zelenograd Staros and Berg were Americans and, like Malashevich, he was so shocked that he did not fail to pour a good bucket on his deceased colleagues:

It makes no sense to analyze the talentedly fabricated lies of the creators of the TV program, who radically distorted the idea of ​​the true founders of domestic microelectronics and computer technology based on it.
I was well acquainted with Staros and Berg and studied in sufficient detail the results of their activities in the Soviet Union...
It is probably true that Staros and Berg, as students, passed classified US data in the field of radar to the Soviet side. But that they thereby provided us with great assistance in the development of the radar station is at least an exaggeration.
<...>
The appearance of microelectronic devices according to Staros-Berg looked like this: crystals extracted from case point transistors were placed in a common poorly sealed case.
Naturally, we could not follow the path of such microelectronics.
Moreover, we knew well how point transistors work as part of ferrite-transistor logic, since we have been using them in these elements of computer technology since 1956.
The confirmation of the correctness of our refusal from the microelectronics offered by Staros was not long in coming.
One fine day in 1966, the director of our institute, academician Sergei Alekseevich Lebedev, called me and said: “Valery Dmitrievich asked you to come urgently. Kalmykov. He didn't say why, he just smiled slyly.
At the ministry, Valery Dmitrievich said: “The other day, Khrushchev visited Staros. He was shown a computer called UMNKh - a machine for managing the national economy.
Khrushchev recommended using UMNKh in the management of the national economy.
After the arrival of Khrushchev, the regional party committee was convened, at which the question was raised whether such a machine was needed in the regions. All the secretaries said that they really needed such a machine.
And who is to make this computer?
To me. I doubt its necessity and that UMNKh works at all.
Therefore, we include you in the commission for the acceptance of this car, but keep in mind that the situation is difficult - if you accept the car, you will have to do it, but I don’t want this, you won’t accept it - there may be a scandal.
Fortunately, everything went well.
Arriving in Leningrad and starting to work in the commission, I first of all wrote small tests.
The transistor crystals removed from the case, placed in the general case of the machine, did not work. Of course, we could not write a negative act, and our wise chairman, General V.F. Balashov, postponed the tests for six months ...
The tests were postponed many more times, without completing the work of the commission, and everyone forgot about the UMNKh machine ...
However, Staros and Berg themselves, and especially their team, made a good impression on us, we became friends with them, shared our experience in developing reliable systems.
<...>
Of course, we could not help but ask our colleagues working in this laboratory what they showed Khrushchev and how they convinced him that the UM-NH machine could control something? Under great secrecy, they answered us: “We showed him the Lessage figure on the oscilloscope and gave him a receiver that is inserted into the ear.” We were also given such receivers, but they worked for no more than a week.
There is no need to be surprised and indignant - examples of Potemkin villages and the new dress of the king can, unfortunately, be found today, moreover, in a cruder form and at a fairly high level.
Both Staros and Berg were enterprising people - inventors, but, unfortunately, inventors in an area where there is only scientific and technical research. There is no benefit from the inventors here, just annoyance.
Therefore, it is impossible to call them the founders of the microelectronics of the Soviet Union, even if N. S. Khrushchev appointed Staros the chief designer of Zelenograd.
Even more false is the assertion that they played some positive role in the development of computer technology in the USSR.

The attitude to this interview was succinctly expressed well-known former developer and expert on Soviet chips:

With all due respect to the academician, he is talking wild game. Well, at least about the development of Staros. What are point transistors? What, to the mother, "extracted from the corps"? He, apparently, misunderstood something from the Starosovsky microtransistors, then he drew some kind of general picture in his head, which had nothing to do with reality at all ...

In general, here you can comment on each proposal, starting with “we could not go along the path of such microelectronics”, and all the Soviet GIS, on which everything was collected, 5 years before Staros, sorry, is that then, is it different?

Not to mention that 10 years later, Burtsev also encountered the monstrously crooked ECL, made by the calloused hands of honest Soviet people, and not by any alien Staros, crying to his heart's content and thus delaying Elbrus-2 for several years.

Particularly pleasing to the eye is the passage about “such receivers were also presented to us, but they worked for no more than a week. There is no need to be surprised and indignant - unfortunately, examples of Potemkin villages and the new dress of the king can be found today.

These receivers are simply magical. If we want to prove the insignificance of the Staros, they are disgusting. If we want to prove the greatness of Soviet superscience, they are amazing!

Until the mid-seventies, this microreceiver could be bought in stores in the USSR and France. This receiver made a worldwide sensation at the convention of radio engineers in the USA. They wrote about him in the newspapers: “how could the USSR overtake us?”. It is noteworthy that even Khrushchev took them with him abroad as souvenirs, gave them to Gamal Nasser and even to Queen Elizabeth herself.

In general, the American Staros made a masterpiece of useless garbage that surpassed the Americans of the Potemkin village.

In order to calmly keep these mutually exclusive paragraphs in your head and not move your mind, you need to have a developed skill of doublethink, as we have already described, incredibly pumped over by Russian academics since the 1930s.

The omnipotence of Kalmykov is also funny from the quote.

Khrushchev signed a decree on the production of UM-1NH, but the devil himself is not a brother to the minister, summons Burtsev and says: I don’t like Staros, fill him up. Burtsev is not an honest and principled Lukin, who was kicked out of the MCI for his unwillingness to frame Kisunko, Burtsev understands everything and through this becomes the head of the computer program for missile defense.

Well, in general, the whole essence of domestic ministries: is the car made?

Yes.

All secretaries of regional committees for?

Yes.

Khrushchev for?

Yes.

Have all the papers for the issue been signed?

Yes.

Do you think the car was released?

And shish, Kalmykov, like Baba Yaga, is against it, he is too lazy to mess around.

One thing pleases in this story, after 20 years, karma caught up with Burtsev, and in the same way, spat on by everyone for the failure of Elbrus, he was expelled from ITMiVT, and later Babayan put the squeeze on him, liquidating the All-Russian Central Committee of the RAS and driving him out into the cold for the second time, yes also stealing all the glory of the father of the Soviet Burroughs.

Let's not forget that Elbrus-1 did not exhaust the use of the Soviet TTL.

Its second most important application is the ES computer, specifically, the junior and middle models of Row-1 and the modified Row-1.

Przyjalkowski, General Designer of the EU, spoke very well about their quality:

It should be noted that already at the beginning of the production of ES computers, significant problems emerged that accompanied the domestic CT for all subsequent years.
Firstly, the microelectronic base on which the ES computers were built was created in parallel with the machines. Since the computer development cycle was at least three years, by the time the machine was first delivered to the consumer, it was outdated in its element base. Until the beginning of the 80s, domestic microcircuits steadily increased the degree of their integration. Thus, the ES-1020 computer used only eight types of 155 series microchips, and by the time it was launched, another two dozen types had appeared, and already of an average degree of integration.
Secondly, the chemical industry could not (or maybe did not want to?) to consistently produce plastic for microcircuits with DIP packages, which ensures the tightness of the package. As a result, microcircuits had an extremely low reliability, especially in conditions of forced ventilation of computer cabinets.
<...>
Among these machines, the ES-1032 model stands out sharply in terms of technical and economic characteristics.
With a single architecture, the reason for such excellent performance for that time was only the technological base. It makes sense to dwell on this case, given the serious debate that took place in the highest governing bodies of the USSR (VPK, SCNT, GOSPLAN, MRP) when the Polish computer ES-1974 appeared in 1032.
The processor of this model, along with RAM and channels, was located in one cabinet, while the domestic models EU-1022 and EU-1033 - in three. Its development was carried out at the Wroclaw factories outside the plans of the SGK ES EVM. When it was completed, the question arose of accepting it into the ES computer and assigning it the appropriate code.
When studying the documentation for the machine, it turned out that when it was created, the fundamental documents and standards of the EU computer were violated.
The main violation was the use of the full series of SN74 chips from Texas Instrument. The Soviet analogue of this series - series 155 ("Logic-2") had twice the worst time characteristics and there were no increased integration schemes in it. Under pressure from the highest authorities of the country (primarily the military-industrial complex and the Moscow Region), the use of foreign components that have no domestic analogues was strictly prohibited by the EU computers documents.
A similar situation was with power supplies.
The use of dual TEZs 280x150 mm in size was a violation of the EC EVM guidelines.
All this, as well as the use of a multilayer printed circuit board of the TEZ and the use of a semiconductor memory instead of a ferrite one (there was no serial production of microcircuits for RAM in the USSR) led to a multiple increase in the degree of integration of a replaceable replacement element, and consequently, a decrease in size and a decrease in power consumption.

For obvious reasons, it is not possible to find a photo of the Elbrus-1 boards. A rough idea of ​​​​microelectronics at their level can be obtained from this picture. This is a space clock from the Soyuz spacecraft, made in 1984 on 134LA8 microcircuits. They ended up in a museum in Mountain View in California and were studied there by Ken Shirriff. The clock, timer and alarm contain more than 100 ICs, which is a little shocking. The microcircuit implements 4I-NOT, the gutted chip, its logic circuit, a snapshot of the crystal and the section responsible for 1 transistor are shown below (https://habr.com).

As we said - the monstrous embodiment of the Soviet TTL (especially in the civilian version) was exactly what crippled Ryad-1 and forever left many with the impression that the release of an IBM clone was a terrible mistake.

The machines themselves were excellent (IBM won't make garbage, this architecture was copied with terrible force by the whole world, from the Germans to the Japanese), our developers, on the whole, also did a good job.

But Zelenograd, before high-quality manufacturing of chips, even on completely purchased western lines, its entire history was like walking to the moon. It was precisely because of the monstrous quality of the first microcircuits of the 155th series that most of the ES Row-1 machines did not work at all or were constantly and cruelly buggy.

It's unfortunate that by the end of the 1980s, Row-1 accounted for more than 25% of the total volume of the EU computers, as a result, at least 1/4 of the unfortunate users throughout the Union were ready to smash these damn machines with a sledgehammer, which was not IBM's fault, nor NICEVT.

All claims for justice had to be sent to Zelenograd, to Malashevich, an official of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, who became famous for his memoirs, in which one story is more surprising than another:

… only about 20 years have passed since the appearance of the first ICs, and the results have been fantastic…

We agree that the results were really fantastic, but not in a positive sense.

In 1972, the CIA prepared a series of reports on the state of Soviet microelectronics and declassified them in 1999.

Here is one of them:

…laboratory analysis of the available samples in the USA revealed that their design is rather primitive and the quality is generally poor.
Samples are clearly inferior to analogues produced in the USA.
Even the factory-marked 1971 items seem to be prototypes... nothing is known of civilian equipment being mass-produced in the USSR that uses integrated circuits, and there are no signs of their use in military equipment. If the USSR produces microcircuits on an industrial scale, it is not clear where they are going to use them or use them.
And if the Union has created a large-scale and viable microcircuit industry, then its interest in large-scale purchases of equipment and technologies from the West for the production of these products is also puzzling ...
The USSR received planar silicon technology too late and, due to constant difficulties in producing the initial silicon material in sufficient quantities, the production of microcircuits in the Union still began quite recently and in very small volumes ...
In 1971, in the USSR, planar and planar epitaxial transistors account for only 1/10 of the total number of transistor types available in Soviet catalogs.
<...>
Production technologies are 5–10 years behind those used in the United States. Western equipment is widely used at the plant. Some items in final testing appear to bear the trademark of a major US integrated circuit manufacturer, although the agent was not able to examine these samples up close to confirm this suspicion.
<...>
Even the limited capacity for manufacturing integrated circuits that the USSR now has is largely the result of the success of the Soviets in acquiring critical equipment from the United States, Western Europe and Japan. At the same time, the failure to acquire the know-how needed to deploy, operate and support this equipment has slowed down chip manufacturing efforts.

In 1999, the CIA declassified another report by USSR seeks to build advanced Semiconductor Industry with embargoed western machinery.

Here's what you can glean from this interesting document:

At present, the production of semiconductors in the USSR is less than 2% of the volume produced in the USA, and still lags behind the current state.
Most of the Soviet military electronic systems are still based on obsolete transistor or vacuum tube technology, and the production of modern third-generation computers for data processing is far behind schedule.
Since 1973, Moscow has acquired equipment and facilities intended for the production of semiconductors, for a total amount of $40 million ...
The US export control authorities received information about the Soviets' procurement and delayed the delivery of certain items critical to automated processing and environmental monitoring systems. The USSR has not yet received a production technology that makes it possible to effectively use the acquired equipment ...
There have been a number of attempts to acquire complete integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing lines, or even IC factories outside of legal channels, but we believe they have not been successful.
In general, the Soviets did not receive, and did not even try to gain access to the relevant know-how ...
Sporadic purchases of Western equipment to fill critical gaps in the manufacturing process likely allowed the USSR to launch IC production somewhat earlier than would otherwise have been possible.
However, we are convinced that the overall impact of this approach on the production capabilities of the Soviets was small.
This is due to the shortage of equipment manufactured in the USSR and outdated production technology, as well as the almost complete lack of control over the quality of products and the state of the working environment at Soviet enterprises.
By 1973, after almost four years of manufacturing experience, the Soviets could only produce relatively simple bipolar small ICs (not highly integrated), of poor quality, and produced in small volumes.
Until 1973, the Soviets produced mostly simple types of semiconductors (transistors and diodes) based on germanium.
The transition to silicon technology and to the production of more modern types of semiconductor devices, including integrated circuits based on silicon, has been slow. Thus, the USSR produced only 1972 million ICs in 10, which was less than two percent of the US production (more than 700 million units).
In our opinion, the Soviets were able to achieve even this low level of production only through the use of large labor resources, through inefficient trial and error methods, and using stolen or secretly acquired Western semiconductor designs.
The Soviets sensed a lack of progress in the development and production of ICs, and in 1973 they seemed to have decided to resort to large-scale assistance from the West.
In 1973-1974, the Soviets began to look for illegal channels to obtain significant amounts of equipment, including the most modern equipment available at that time ...
Finally, the USSR may now have mass production of its own test devices.
However, this technology is now obsolete and, unless the Soviets upgrade it or use more advanced technology, it may not be adequate for today's high-density semiconductor production.

This report is interestingly combined with the words of Malashevich:

“Then there were three countries in the world that made, say, photolithographic equipment: the USA, Japan and the Soviet Union. This is the most precise equipment among all technical devices: the level of technology in microelectronics depends on the level of photolithography... It must be remembered that with all the problems that our country experienced, only the Soviet Union had the only self-sufficient electronics in the world. In which everything was its own and which itself produced the entire range of electronic products from radio tubes to VLSI. And it had its own materials science, its own mechanical engineering - everything was its own.

Comparison of Soyuz and Shuttle watches

At the same time, the level of military space electronics from an architectural point of view in the USSR did not differ from the American one, the lag was in the level of integration and technologies.

Ken Shirriff writes:

To compare Soyuz clocks with modern American space electronics of the 1980s, I took a board from the AP-101S computer of the Space Shuttle. The photo below shows a diagram from the Soyuz clock (left) and the Shuttle computer (right). Although the Shuttle computer is more advanced in terms of technology, the difference between them is not as big as I expected.
Both systems are based on TTL chips, although the Shuttle has chips from a faster generation. Many of the Shuttle's chips are slightly more complex; note the chips with 20 pins at the top.
The big white chip is much more complex - this is the AMD Am2960 memory error correction chip.
The Shuttle PCB is more advanced, with more than two layers, allowing the chips to be placed 50% more densely.
At that time, it was believed that the USSR was 8–9 years behind the West in IS technologies; this is consistent with what is seen based on a comparison of the two boards.
However, what surprised me was the similarity between the Shuttle computer and the Soyuz watch.
I expected the Shuttle computer to use 1980s microprocessors and be a generation ahead of the Soyuz clock, but it turns out that both systems use TTL technology, and in many cases the chips end up with almost the same functionality.
For example, both boards use chips that implement 4 NAND gates each (look for the 134ΛB1A chip on the left, and 54F00 on the right).

Coming of CMOS

For general development, we also mention the history of field effect transistors (field-effect transistor, FET).

As a concept, it appeared even earlier, in the works of Lilienfeld (Julius Edgar Lilienfeld) of the 1920s, and, in fact, Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley tried to make it, not without success, resulting in a bipolar transistor.

The torment with field-effect transistors lasted from 1945 (Heinrich Johann Welker, JFET prototype - junction FET) until 1953 (George F. Dacey and Ian Munro Ross patent for an industrial, but expensive and unreliable method for manufacturing JFETs).

The technology was still so crude and unsuccessful that by the mid-1950s, most researchers refused to bother with FETs at all, and those that were produced were made in small runs for special applications (for example, GE Technitron, a 1959 thin-film cadmium sulfide FET from RCA, or a 1960 work from Crystalonics).

The breakthrough did not come until 1959, when an Egyptian-born American engineer, Mohamed M. Atalla, discovered the passivation of the surface of silicon wafers, which made possible the mass production of silicon ICs.

Together with another American foreigner, Korean Dion Kang (Dawon Kahng), Atalla developed the concept of forming metal-oxide structures for the production of FETs - this is how a new type of transistor, metal-oxide-semiconductor FET (MOSFET), presented in two versions: pMOS ( p-type MOS) and nMOS (n-type MOS).

Initially, the technology was not interested in two serious players in the market - the Bell laboratory and TI (they continued to hack the unsuccessful JFET, even releasing a planar version on a pn junction in 1962), but the rest: RCA, General Microelectronics, IBM and Fairchild, immediately continued research.

Also in 1962, RCA produced the first prototype of a 16-transistor MOS chip (Steve R. Hofstein and Fred P. Heiman), and a year later, Fairchild engineers Chih-Tang Sah and General Microelectronics Frank Wanles (Frank Marion Wanlass have finally developed the perfect technology - the complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor, CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor, CMOS), which has rightfully taken its place in the list of the greatest inventions in history.

In 1964, the first mass-produced MOS transistors appeared from RCA and Fairchild, and in the same year, General Microelectronics released the first mass-produced MOS chip, and CMOS chips appeared in 1968 from Fairchild.

The first commercial application of MOS chips was a NASA order for ICs for the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform program, completed by GM. CMOS was the first type of logic that received an exclusively integrated implementation, it had a lot of advantages over TTL: the highest scalability and phenomenal packing density (which allowed the development of large and extra-large integration chips without problems), low cost, low power consumption and enormous potential for various improvements.

An added bonus was that CMOS required several fewer steps in photolithography, which not only reduced cost, but also simplified equipment and significantly reduced the chance of manufacturing errors.

The only problem with early CMOS chips was the speed of operation - low compared to the frivolity on TTL, and even more so ECL.

As a result, throughout the 1970s, CMOS was actively used where extreme speeds were not required - in RAM chips and various microcontrollers.

In 1968, the famous RCA 4000 logic series was released, which became the same for CMOS as SN54 / 74 for TTL. At the same time, RCA created the first 288-bit SRAM chip. In the same year, Fairchild engineers Noyce (Robert Norton Noyce), Moore (Gordon Earle Moore) and Grove (Andrew Stephen Grove) founded Intel, and manager Walter Jeremiah Sanders III founded AMD.

Initially, investors looked askance at Sanders, since he was primarily a manager, and not an inventor, like Noyce and Moore, however, this couple also contributed to the creation of AMD by investing their money in the company.

The point was to start making money on military orders - at least two companies had to participate in tenders, so Intel saw no harm in growing a competitor. The plan generally worked, AMD became famous for many original developments.

In Russian sources, they are often, without understanding the topic, called ordinary copycats, but they cloned only 8080 and x86 (at the same time releasing a bunch of their own architectures), and they developed everything else on their own and quite well, in 1990-2000. already Intel had to catch up with AMD.

In the early 1970s, CMOS was not the most common technology, pMOS was used, which then had much faster performance, pMOS chips were almost all the iconic American microcircuits of those years.

In 1969, Intel launched their first and last TTLS line (Intel 3101 64-bit SRAM; 3301 ROM; 3105 register; 300x BSP chip series), but pMOS took over.

Intel 1101 (256-bit SRAM), the famous Intel 4004 and Intel 8008 processors, National Semiconductor IMP-16, PACE and SC/MP, TI TMS1000 microcontroller, Rockwell International PPS-4 and PPS-8 are all pMOS chips.

By 1972, nMOS technology had also caught up with its relative, the Intel 2102 (1 kbit SRAM) was made on it. Since electron mobility in an n-type channel is approximately three times higher than hole mobility in a p-type channel, nMOS logic can increase the switching speed.

For this reason, nMOS quickly began to supplant pMOS, and after 10 years, almost all Western microprocessors were already nMOS chips. pMOS was cheaper and provided a better level of integration, while nMOS was faster.

And then suddenly the Japanese broke into the market.

The Japanese renaissance had been slowly gaining momentum since the end of the occupation, and by the end of the 1960s they were ready to compete for the market. It was decided to start with cheap and simple electronics, watches, calculators, etc., and for them, CMOS was the ideal option, as cheap as possible and with minimal power consumption, and the speed in hours did not care.

In 1969, Toshiba developed C2MOS (Clocked CMOS), a lower power, faster speed technology, and applied it to Sharp's 1972 Elsi Mini LED pocket calculator chips.

That same year, Suwa Seikosha (now Seiko Epson) began developing a CMOS chip for its 38 Seiko 1971SQW quartz watch. The idea was adopted even by the conservative Swiss, in 1970, under the influence of the Japanese, the Hamilton Watch Company for the first time defiled the traditions of Swiss mechanical craftsmanship by releasing the Hamilton Pulsar Wrist Computer electronic watch.

In general, due to its ultra-low power consumption compared to TTL and high integration, CMOS was actively promoted in the portable device market throughout the 1970s.

In the West, at that time, everyone was fooling around with MOS technology, only in 1975 did the first CMOS processors Intersil 6100 and RCA CDP 1801 come out (the most famous use was the mission to Jupiter, Galileo, 1989, chosen due to low power consumption).

CMOS was originally 10 times slower, for example, Intel 5101 (1 kb SRAM, 1974, CMOS) had an access time of 800 ns, and Intel 2147 (4 kb SRAM, 1976, depletion-load nMOS technology) already 55–70 ns. Only in 1978.

Toshiaki Masuhara from Hitachi created the twin-well Hi-CMOS technology, the memory chip on which (HM6147, similar to Intel 2147) was just as fast, but consumed 8 times less power.

Process technology of the late 1970s was in the 3 µm range, in 1983 Intel introduced 1,5 µm (Intel 80386), and in 1985-1988 Iranian-American engineer Bijan Davari from IBM developed a prototype 250 nm chip, but mass-produced devices were still much thicker, although even 1 micron was already enough to achieve speed, finally surpassing all other types of IC architectures.

From the mid-1980s, the share of CMOS began to grow exponentially, and by 2000, 99,9% of all microcircuits produced in the world were created using one or another version of CMOS technology.

Everything you wanted to know about CMOS but were afraid to ask. FinFET (fin field-effect transistor) is one of the most advanced CMOS implementations. Two MOSFETs on a test plate, viewed through a microscope. Visual difference between nMOS and pMOS. The classic NAND gate - its circuit and physical embodiment in silicon (pictures and photos https://en.wikipedia.org)

Fujitsu mastered 700 nm in 1987, followed by Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric, NEC and Toshiba in 1989 released 500 nm.

The Japanese continued to dominate process development throughout the early 1990s, with Sony creating 1993nm in 350 and Hitachi and NEC finally producing 250nm.

The Americans lagged behind in this regard, for example, versions of the Intel 80486 (manufactured from 1989 to 2007) had a manufacturing process of 1, 000 and 800 nm, Pentium 600-800 nm. Hitachi introduced the 250nm process in 160, in 1995 Mitsubishi responded with 1996nm, and then the Koreans jumped into the fray, and in 150 Samsung Electronics rolled out 1999nm.

It wasn't until 2000 that they were finally surpassed by American companies when Gurtej Singh Sandhu and Trung T. Doan of Micron Technology invented the 90nm process. The Pentium IV was produced according to the 180–65 nm process technology, the Asians did not give up, in 2002 Toshiba and Sony developed 65 nm, and then Taiwanese TSMC joined the big leagues with 45 nm in 2004.

Sandhu and Doan's developments allowed Micron Technology to reach 30nm, and the sub-20nm era began with High-κ/metal gate FinFET.

The USSR, unfortunately, could no longer boast of any breakthroughs in CMOS logic and limited itself to copying the MOS chips of the 1970s.

Note that the term CMOS does not describe the actual logic of the circuit, but its technical process (and in this it differs from all the others mentioned here). At the same time, a variety of solutions are possible within the framework of CMOS, for example, Pass transistor logic (PTL), on which the famous Zilog Z80 processor (1976) and many other chips were assembled.

There were also more exotic options, such as Cascode voltage switch logic (CVSL), and analog chips often use Bipolar CMOS (BiCMOS). In 1976, Texas Instruments released the SBP0400 microprocessor, based generally on integrated injection logic (I2L) - the most perverted version of RTL.

In I2L, special “transistors” are used with a combined base and a common emitter, which are not capable of conducting current in the normal state and are connected to injector electrodes, in fact, logic is assembled from these injectors.

Thanks to this, the I2L has an excellent level of integration, surpassing the MOS level of the 1970s, but everything spoils its slowness, such a circuit will not be able to accelerate to more than 50 MHz.

As a result, I2L processors remained a curiosity of the mid-1970s, but in the USSR they managed to rip them off just in case, like microprocessor sets of the K582 and K584 series.

In the late 1970s, microprocessor-based implementations of popular mainframe architectures came into vogue. TI created the TMS9900, DEC created the LSI-11, and Data General created the mN601 MicroNova.

An interesting question arose - what happens if a third-party company develops its own processor that is fully compatible with the instruction set?

The early patent wars between Intel and AMD led the Supreme Court to rule that the instruction set itself could not be patented, being public by definition, only its specific implementation was protected.

Based on this, Fairchild (not daring to offend really strong players like IBM or DEC) took and released a clone of Data General - the F9440 MICROFLAME processor using proprietary I3L technology (Isoplanar Integrated Injection Logic, an improved version of I2L), brazenly advertising it as a full-fledged replacement for the DG mainframe Nova 2.

To say that Data General was furious is still too soft, but legally they could not do anything. In order to maintain control over their customers, DG cleverly added a clause in the license agreement that the program could only run on Data General hardware, even if it could run on the Fairchild F9440 (or any other processor), and that would already be copyright infringement.

In 1978, Fairchild counterclaimed that such a license was anti-competitive and sought $10 million in damages. To make it even more fun, they released the F9445, a MICROFLAME II compatible with Nova 3, and advertised that it was 10 times faster.

However, here Fairchild has planted a pig on itself, since the development of such a complex topology delayed all other production and put the company on the verge of bankruptcy, especially since the processor was also released late. In addition, DG claimed that the Nova 3 architecture could not be reproduced without industrial espionage, and rolled another lawsuit.

In 1979, Fairchild was taken over by oil company Schlumberger Limited (Exxon bought Zilog in 1980 in response). Production of the F9445 finally began in the first half of 1981. In general, its architecture is similar to the previous one, and Nova 3 instructions are emulated by microcode. The inclusion of microcode allowed the chip to be used for more than just teasing the Data General.

In 1980, the US Air Force published the famous MIL-STD-1750A standard for a 16-bit instruction set architecture for everything that flies, from fighter jets to satellites. It defines only the command system, but not its physical embodiment, as a result, many firms are connected to the manufacture of various military and space processors that correspond to this ISA.

This is how the processors of Signetics, Honeywell, Performance Semiconductor, Bendix, Fairchild, McDonnell Douglas and other exotic manufacturers appeared.

Fairchild developed firmware for the F9445 implementing MIL-STD-1750A by 1985, and the F9450 was born. Even the previous version came out very hot, but in the new one it was necessary to use an unparalleled case made of beryllium oxide BeO, which has a thermal conductivity higher than that of any non-metal (excluding diamond), and even higher than many metals. The processor turned out to be very original and was used for military purposes until the mid-1990s.

The legal battle between Data General and Fairchild continued until 1986, when the exhausted company chose not to proceed and even paid Fairchild $52,5 million in compensation. Ironically, by this point, the original Nova 2 and Nova 3 were no longer in production.

Lawsuits ruined both companies, in 1987 Schlumberger resold Fairchild to National Semiconductor, which covered the entire F94xx line.

Thus ended the last attempt to use something significantly different from CMOS for microprocessors.

The British firm Ferranti licensed from Fairchild in 1971 an extremely original collector-diffusion-isolation (CDI) process that they had developed for TTL chips, but abandoned by switching to I3L and MOS. In the early 1970s, the British Ministry of Defense issued them an order to develop a military microprocessor based on this technology.

By 1976, the F100-L was ready - an excellent 8 MHz 16-bit processor for about 1 gates, the original instruction set. It became the first microprocessor made in Europe and contests the honor of being the world's first 500-bit microprocessor with the Texas Instruments TMS16, released the same year. However, TI used the nMOS process, and as a result, its chip could only be pushed into a bulky custom DIP9900 package, while Ferranti fit into a standard 64-leg package without any problems.

The architecture turned out to be very successful, although, alas, it became not only the first original European chip, but also the last (except for the 200 F1984-L modification).

Some of the processors of exotic architectures mentioned in the article. Photo from the author's collection.

The end of Ferranti was anecdotal and sad.

By the mid-1980s, they were making excellent money on military orders in Europe and decided to enter the North American market.

To do this, they acquired International Signal and Control, which has been producing military equipment for the US government since the 1970s, in particular the AGM-45 Shrike and RIM-7 Sea Sparrow missiles.

Readers may already have a question - how did it happen that the Yankees sold their entire military contractor to the British?

They would have sold Raytheon to the USSR!

Only now the gift turned out to be rotten inside.

In fact, despite excellent reporting, ISC practically did not produce or develop anything, and by order of the NSA and the CIA, all the 1970s were sold to South Africa (which is officially under the most severe UN sanctions for a bad attitude towards blacks) the latest American weapon, electronic warfare, communications and more.

In exchange for this, South Africa allowed the Tseraushniks to secretly build a listening station at the Cape of Good Hope to track Soviet submarines. However, it turned out that South Africa decided to share American toys with Saddam, and the CIA did not like this very much.

How could you wind up the whole business so beautifully and not get burned so as not to answer unpleasant questions at the UN?

They quickly found a way out - in 1988 they dumped the ISC to the British.

At first they were very happy, and then they dug deeper and gasped.

It turned out that ISC does not have any legal business, and indeed production in general, all it has is papers about “produced” incredible technologies needed to launder weapons money.

The result was an incredible scandal, the severity of which fell mainly on the new owner.

ISC founder James Guerin and 18 of his associates, who were dragged to federal prison for many, many years, yelled along the way that they were not guilty, and everything was in agreement with the NSA and the CIA, but who will believe the scammers?

In 1994, Bobby Ray Inman, Clinton's secretary of defense and member of the ISC board of directors, quietly resigned, and the case was finally hushed up.

Inman was generally a very interesting person - under Reagan, he was first director of the NSA, then deputy director of the CIA, and in parallel - CEO of Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation, one of the official trustees of Caltech and a member of the board of directors of Dell, AT&T, Massey Energy and the same ISC.

As a result, the Americans, who played a little in spies, received during the Gulf War on the head with their own Mk 20 Rockeye II cluster bomb, which, according to the drawings transferred to South Africa, was assembled for the Iraqis by the Chilean Cardoen Industries, and Ferranti, disgraced and ruined, was in 1993 taken over by Siemens-Plessley.

The Soviet CMOS is 90% associated with microprocessors - Intel clones, and does not apply to Elbrus, so we will omit it.

In the next series, we are waiting for hot emitter-coupled logic, basic matrix crystals and the development of Elbrus-2.

Comments

[DED_peer_DED]

What's with the header image?
Even I don't understand.
The author keeps everyone for ...?

[DED_peer_DED]

Quote: riddik70

If we compare the 155 series and 134 microcircuits used in the military

Episode 133, I'll clarify :)

[MrFox]

134 series was also, God forbid, the trick is resistance to acceleration and shock loads

[DED_peer_DED]

Second question, who is this person?

Perhaps not even knowing (unlike you) the English language.

[Aviator_]

To do something, he made his kristadin, but there was no theory, so everything ended in nothing. Moreover, the heyday of lamp technology began, where both theory and practice were at their best.

[Sperry]

https://topwar.ru/184029-rozhdenie-sovetskoj-pro-kristadiny-triody-i-tranzistory.html

that's who
By the way, he knew the language perfectly, corresponded with all the luminaries of radio engineering

[DED_peer_DED]

he refused to leave the city before the blockade began, and in 1942 he starved to death.

That's what I thought from the year he died.
Yeah...
And that in Imperial Russia, under private capitalism, the approach to local inventors was better than under Soviet rule?
Riley?

[viralig]

Pretty interesting personality. In fact, there was a good article about him, but I don’t remember in which magazine - Losev’s Glow was called. In fact, he was the first to work with semiconductors in the era of lamps. It is a pity that the talent was not allowed to be revealed.

[Alien From]

The author, well, for the life of me, I still don’t understand how these computers work ....... for all articles a huge plus

[dauria]

The author, well, for the life of me, I still don’t understand how these computers work.

So here about the "bricks", and not about the design of St. Basil's Cathedral. Simply popular and intelligible in the form of "educational program" - and then a thick book will come out. And even then - you need to understand what audience you are composing for. Do not lead into the wilds, feel when they no longer understand you, highlight the essence in bold, do not go yourself where you can "swim".
And here (forgive the author) - an unsystematic mess from the de Morgan rule to life stories.

[lot]

Quote: Alien From

I don't understand how computers work

catch. oh good video.

[Byurer]

When you don’t really understand anything, but it’s still very interesting!

[DED_peer_DED]

What came to hand first, let the people take an interest.

About six months ago, I still came across assemblies from the Su-27 of the early 80s, the first versions. I can't find it, maybe I threw it away.
It's all ours.

[DED_peer_DED]

Doesn't look like galoshes.

[Alexey RA]

Quote: DED_peer_DED

Doesn't look like galoshes.

So this is defense.

We had a defense industry - cool, strong, and we are still proud of it. We are grateful to our grandfathers and our fathers for creating such a defense after the Great Patriotic War.

© next paragraph after "galoshes"

[Ryaruav]

a good article for specialists, but at least someone answer the question why a country that produced excellent aviation, good missiles lagged behind in radio engineering and agriculture, just some kind of rock over the country, and what about chemistry there?

[DED_peer_DED]

I'll try ...
Missed the beginning, delayed the continuation.
In the west, they seized and carried, but ours doubted.
Since in the west, everything started with a private initiative, we don’t have it, with the state.
"Cybernetics - the corrupt girl of capitalism ..." (c)
By the time we decided that we needed it, we were already a little late.
Do you want to hear how our inventors reinvented the same thing 20-30 times, not knowing that it had already been invented?
If everything that our inventors invented and invented would be applied, then our country would be ahead of everyone.
Our people are golden, the best of the best.
And, here we were not lucky with the authorities before, in some places :)
Now, uh .... we have them ....

[boni592807]

DED_peer_DED (Eugene), Today, 20:05, NEW:
"..... I'll try ... We missed the beginning, dragged out the continuation. In the west, they seized and carried, but ours doubted. Since in the Wed,,,, West it all started with a private initiative, then we don’t have it, with a state one .... If everything that our inventors invented and invented was applied, then our country would be ahead of everyone. Our people are - golden, the best of the best. Oh, we were not lucky with power before, in some places :) Now, wow .... we have them ...."

Let me add a few things to what you said.
You can’t argue, .... but sometimes you will agree that without the STATE, nothing would have happened:
- industrialization and, accordingly, the military-industrial complex of the USSR, as well as the military-industrial complex, both before and during the Second World War (2 MB); Is it possible to compare the capabilities of the military-industrial complex of the USA, Germany, England, France, etc. in the aftermath of the satellites of the "Reich".
- not only technical intelligence (secrets), but also plums of "initializers", a transmission flashed about an office in the USSR that was engaged in patent work. "They worked", as it turned out, the "brothers" not for the STARKH and NOT for conscience, but for ...;

- let's not forget that comparing the situations in the USA and the USSR (RF), VERY different, someone "EARNED" to the maximum from thefts, aho, to wars. And someone (USSR) - "Everything for the front - everything for VICTORY!". Agree, there are several different possibilities. and situations. Vpmpnim, about the "legacy" of Germany (the Reich). and USA.
Therefore, they decided from above what is MORE IMPORTANT now, far from always qualifications and the ability to assess the prospect allowed (corn and Red Square) ...
.
Best regards

[DED_peer_DED]

I agree with you in many ways.
I just didn't write that much.
I love and respect the USSR. There is a reason. But there were also disadvantages. Below I tried to understand them, but not the fact that I was right.

[ViacheslavS]

someone (USSR) - "Everything for the front - everything for VICTORY!". Agree

And why is this someone exclusively from the USSR, the USA for the front to win, in fact for free (Lend-Lease) drove large volumes of products that are extremely necessary for defeating the Nazis.

[Nikolay Sayenko]

practically? When did Russia finally pay for lend-lease? By the way, during the war they paid in gold! Which was delivered directly to the states.

[ViacheslavS]

When did Russia finally pay for lend-lease? By the way, during the war they paid in gold! Which was delivered directly to the states.

Yes, you read the conditions of Lend-Lease, finally, how much illiteracy can be demonstrated. And also read what they paid for during the war and whether it has anything to do with Lend-Lease.

[Lad]

Because the country lagged behind not in agriculture and electronics, but in the economy in general. And very far behind. Everything rested only on tightening the belts of the population. And in a couple of areas, the country tried to stay at the world level only thanks to the strongest concentration of forces and means in these same areas. Everything was taken from everyone to develop rockets and aircraft. And those over there flew with outdated electronics and something else. But why the country systematically lagged behind in the economy is the second question.

[DED_peer_DED]

Quote: Lad

Because the country lagged behind not in agriculture and electronics, but in the economy in general.

Name your year of birth, please, be kind and honest, if possible.
Don't take it as an insult.

[Procopius Nesterov]

DED_peer_DE and you do not discuss the times of the Russian Empire because you did not live there?
How does the level of knowledge, especially in the age of the Internet, depend on the year of birth?
You just didn't like what the person wrote, and started attacking the left issue.

[Foul skeptic]

How does the level of knowledge, especially in the age of the Internet, depend on the year of birth?

You do not.
But how in the "age of the Internet" one can glean "poor quality" information and not perceive it critically due to the lack of one's own experience ... depends.

[Knell wardenheart]

In short, as far as I personally understand, because in the USSR there was horrendous management hand in hand with low-competence people in power. The situation could have been moved off the ground if the scientists had "punched through" with a united front - but no, they ate each other like food, in the struggle for public finances and in conditions when the centralization of work and planning "in advance" was put, often, terribly .

[alystan]

But today, very often effective managers rule.
And all Pinocchio, and some, moreover, Heroes of Labor!?

[Knell wardenheart]

"Management" in itself is a good thing. The only trouble is that in the USSR they did not pay attention to him at all, because there was an anti-market paradigm of thinking.
The USSR despised the market and "hawking", which, in fact, management was engaged in in its understanding. Accordingly, we did not have this hierarchical structure, and top management also - for which we paid the price in the 90s, when it turned out that strong, professional production managers were absolutely no "hucksters", like those who stand above them. These people either vegetated from bread to water with their powerful teams, or sold priceless developments literally for beads and whiskey. When you DO NOT know how to trade, but deal with those who CAN do it, they will really fool you by 5+. What happened.
Such a sad state of affairs could not last long, and we still had some kind of management. But, as you understand, in a short time and in a limited competitive environment, it could not develop NORMAL.
He has developed the way he is. Many of these people today are just as "conditionally professional" as many of our conditional professionals who know how to wear jackets and puff out their cheeks, but beyond this they are extremely limited in their abilities, planning horizon and imagination.
But, in the kingdom of the blind and crooked, the king. So due to the lack of adequate competition, the "best representatives" receive bonuses for their best, not because they are just super. Because there is still no one to replace them - we have a problem with professionalism, both in terms of education, and in terms of efficiency and transparency in the selection of personnel.

[ycuce234-san]

Quote: Knell Wardenheart

for which we paid the price in the 90s, when it turned out that strong, professional production managers are absolutely no "hucksters", like those who stand above them. These people either vegetated from bread to water with their powerful teams, or sold priceless developments literally for beads and whiskey.

This can be partially regulated by law - you can set minimum industry thresholds for the cost of a separate contract for the sale of development, technology, sample, performance of work, etc. Costs and some kind of profit should be taken into account in the cost. Then the minimum allowable prices will be determined by professional economists and not by specific technical specialists who are incompetent in terms of economics. It would be useful to do this even now.

[ism_ek]

Quote: Knell Wardenheart

In short, as far as I personally understand, because in the USSR there was horrendous management hand in hand with low-competence people in power.

You are fundamentally wrong. The author repeatedly named the reason for the backwardness of the USSR from the USA. The USSR was a poor country with a gold reserve at the level of Belgium. IBM's spending on research exceeded the budget of all Soviet science (((. In such conditions, staying at the level of the United States was very good.

[Knell wardenheart]

And why was the USSR a poor country, given that it was the richest resource power and had a powerful industry and developed scientific potential? It is because of the cave management. So there is no mistake here. The manager "knocks out money", he is also looking for markets, he is also selling - this is a person who is the link between the producer and the buyer, the producer and financiers, the producer and scientists.

[meandr51]

Yu.I. Mukhin, who was Ch. engineer of the ferroalloy plant, there is an episode in his memoirs when the Japanese at the Mitsubishi company tried to surprise him with their management.
To which he noticed that their sales department is 10 times larger than the Soviet one with the same amount of work.

[Knell wardenheart]

Well, memories are memories, and the Japanese economy overtook the Soviet one in the 80s.
Of course, this surprised the Soviet nomenclature - they did not understand what it was - sales in the face of fierce competition.

[ism_ek]

Quote: Knell Wardenheart

Well, memories are memories, and the Japanese economy overtook the Soviet one in the 80s.

The Japanese are 120 million, like the population of today's Russia. The territory is small, but the climate is tropical.... 2...3% of the population can easily feed the rest of the crowd. Well, the backwardness of Japan is a big myth and Tsushima is proof of this.

[meandr51]

Something is unbelievable. If only in dollars...

[Knell wardenheart]

In GDP, i.e. in the total competitive value of all manufactured products. The peak of the power of the Soviet economy was in 1983, for the period from 1980 to 1988, Japan caught up, caught up and overtook the USSR. This was partly to blame for the idiotic economic decisions of the late USSR and not very smart foreign economic policy. But a fact is a fact - while we were making money on the sale of cement, rolled metal and oil - Japan was learning to make the same money by processing raw materials into a high-tech product.
I recommend looking at the numbers in the Wikipedia article "List of countries by largest historical GDP" (this is an article in the English segment, because apparently we found it uninteresting to translate such things into Russian). Dynamics of changes in GDP growth of the countries of the world by years and in numbers.

[meandr51]

I'm talking about dollars. In tons and pieces - it is doubtful.

[Genry]

Quote: Ryaruav

answer the question why a country that produced excellent aircraft good missiles lagged behind in radio engineering and agriculture

In short: because instead of growing wheat and cybernetics, they sowed corn en masse, and those who are against are those accomplices of the Stalin cult.

[Seafood]

The number of resources is limited, so there were more priority areas. And Lysenkoshchina hit hard on agriculture.

[meandr51]

But for some reason, Americans consider Lysenko one of the brilliant scientists and put him in the list of the 300 best. It was not Lysenko who hit with his colleagues, who developed many useful varieties and technologies with his colleagues, but Khrushchev, who stupidly tried to copy the Americans and remove the Stalinist generation of scientists. The USSR is generally an unfavorable country for agricultural production due to a short growing season and a sharply continental climate over almost the entire territory.

[Seafood]

But for some reason, Americans consider Lysenko one of the brilliant scientists and put him in the list of the 300 best.

Give a link to this top.

[meandr51]

As for Lysenko, another Khrushchev-Gorbachev myth. Lysenko was director of the Institute of Genetics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Therefore, in principle, he could not fight with himself, genetics and his institute. The discussion on genetics touched only on some philosophical questions that had no relation to practical work. This controversy flared up over the question of who would dominate the leadership. The usual personnel swara of workers and intriguers. And Lysenko got into the world directory of the best scientists of all time. His ideas have been confirmed in recent years.

[ViacheslavS]

Missiles and aviation were out of the market and the issues of cost, quality, maintenance costs were not the priority themselves. As we can see, the lag in radio electronics or agriculture is only in comparison of consumer parameters, and for a rocket, its speed, range, accuracy are more important than price or any maintainability.

[stankow]

You are wrong about maintainability. Beila, it's good.

[lot]

rather a philosophical fail.
we were told at one time that it was capitalism that the proletariat was strangling numbers - it was taking away jobs.
then it was too late.

[ism_ek]

Quote: Ryaruav

why did a country that produced excellent aviation, good missiles, lagged behind in radio engineering and agriculture, just some kind of rock over the country, and chemistry in the same place?

Have you ever looked at the globe? Don't you understand why in central Russia crops are less than in Texas?

[Mountain shooter]

Met a mention of my teacher...

. We took A. I. Chernyshov from the graduate school of the Voronezh State University to the laboratory over the limit, moreover, as a senior engineer. I, knowing him even earlier, did not give him any group (and he did not ask),

This is Anatoly Ivanovich Chernyshov. An absolutely brilliant specialist not only in microelectronics, but also in vacuum technology. But the 90s ruined him, like many talented people of his generation...

[DED_peer_DED]

To the Author.
Have you ever wondered why this happened and is happening?
I'll try to imagine...
For example, now in the West they invent everything they are not too lazy to do.
Invented that LGBT is better than it was PREVIOUSLY.
They invented Covid and shared it with the whole world.
They invented women ministers of the Armed Forces.
Etc. etc.
Should we rush to repeat the data and other "inventions" of the West?
Maybe our healthy skepticism is the reason?
What do you think ?

[Sperry]

didn't quite get the hang of how LGBT is related to chip copying. Of the LGBT chip designers of the 1960s and 70s, I can only think of Lynn Conway, who is a real transgender. But what it is, I still don't know.

[DED_peer_DED]

Quote from Sperry.

didn't quite get how LGBT is related to chip copying

Well, you understand, but I don't.
All innovations must be checked.
Need to copy. Okay.
There are many of them (kapstran), but we are alone.
Was it easy for us?
They have a symbiosis, and we have the USSR - one country.
Systems are different, approaches too.
Remember June - September 1941. Who helped us then?
Никто.
So it is in electronics. We were alone.
At the same time, we had to do everything that is possible and what is impossible, one.
A German in 1941 came to us with all of Europe in a heap. Ah, we were alone then.
So it is with the electronic revolution.

[DED_peer_DED]

With all due respect to you, and it is, you do not see the true causes of the problems you write about.
We computer scientists (and I count myself among these ranks) have the peculiarity of believing in ourselves and our opinion. After all, we are not fools, are we?
But our fixation within the limits of the program we are compiling sometimes leads us to a misunderstanding of the processes lying outside it.
I am a former small programmer, although I think that their former does not exist, according to logic and the ability to use logic.
Please excuse me for spreading my thoughts along the tree :)

[Alex Nevs]

Yes, here is the simple logic of Philosophy, not directly said. The pluses and minuses of one ideology are opposed, respectively, to the minuses and pluses of another. Good in one, bad in the other and vice versa. And all this changes in the next round of development.

[meandr51]

In the 60s, Americans regularly threw false information about micromodules and microcircuits to us, and those who liked to copy them often deviated along dead-end development branches. Own science is better than automatic copying.

[DialogN]

1. An attempt to do everything "by ourselves" inevitably leads to a growing lag behind the best examples.
2. Unfortunately, until now, some are stuck in the first/second phase of this awareness (anger, denial).

[Mikhail3]

How to understand your strange attack? Americans in those years did everything themselves. And successfully. What is your idea? Should I have taken someone else's? So they took it ... but it was not given) Because everything had to be done by ourselves. Like the best.

[DialogN]

Quote: Mikhail3

Americans in those years did everything themselves. And successfully. What is your idea?

the Americans did the first then, they simply had no one to borrow from.
And now they do what they can do well themselves and freely use other people's capacities to make everything else. Well, for example, the Americans themselves developed the processor in the iPhone, but they made the processor in Taiwan or Korea, and assembled the phone for them in China from components from all over the world.

[AlexeyEg]

I think the fact is that in the country, no matter what .. there are a lot of fools. All the cool little things, generates competition, often tough. When she is in our country, then everything will be . Competition for the attention of the consumer, and his wallet.. And not for money from the state. And yes .. our people are a little lazy .. and not creative .. All this must be driven into the head from childhood, the ability to be creative .. imagination, and work .. as well as love for the motherland. And then, everything will fly, with a whistle. And yes, a person with abilities is genetics! Of course, not only she determines, but! So, talented people should not be spread rot, and help them in every possible way .. and not push out of the country (very smart) Otherwise, the gene pool in the country has become very thinned out.

[meandr51]

Yeah. This is especially "revealing" in the development of aviation in the 30-80s.

[mister-red]

The Soviet answer Minuteman I used a tube computer, and the R-7 rocket (including due to the larger size of all other components) turned out to be monstrously huge compared to the American one: the Yankees have about 29 tons and 16,3x1,68 meters against an incredible 280 tons and 34x10,3 meters.

The first Minutemen I could throw 600kg for 9 thousand km, R-7 3t for 8 thousand km.

[stankow]

And she didn’t have a computer, it seems, an analog control system.

[jbstphr]

an exceptional level of information for the Russian Internet (generally of close quality / elaboration and I can’t remember); I read several of your articles about missile defense (via random links on the so-called "trunk"). And this article is just really good.

[Nitarius]

Soviet ICBMs have always been much larger than American ones, due to the backwardness of technology. you can give the author off his feet ... of course, yes, I won’t get r..la .. but I’ll definitely beat off the Faberge! who allowed you to humiliate our developers? who decided that we were behind? YOU... well, stick your head in the ASS .. and squeak there! as already got the Western Assholes! it's disgusting to read! I personally know a couple of people from one research institute in Tomsk! they made logic on a pair of microcircuits and worked like clockwork .. while the west needed a whole process to process the same functions to control a rocket on a certain course! mathematics at the highest level .... simplicity as an ax but does a much more important and complex job! it only says about there .. that our Kalashnikov shoots and works .. there is a rocket! and Western stupid people are not friends with logic and AT ALL! God didn’t give them brains yet .. they didn’t work out! they certainly will earn .. but not in this life!

[Alexey RA]

Quote: Nitarius

you can give the author off his feet ... of course, yes, I won’t get r..la .. but I’ll definitely beat off the Faberge! who allowed you to humiliate our developers? who decided that we were behind?

TTX decided. Just compare the R-39 family with the Trident family. And the size of their carriers.

Quote: Nitarius

and Western stupid people are not friends with logic and AT ALL! God didn’t give them brains yet .. they didn’t work out! they certainly will earn .. but not in this life!

As I understand it, you wrote this post on a racially correct 146% Russian electronic computer with a Russian operating system and other software?

[mister-red]

TTX decided. Just compare the R-39 family with the Trident family. And the size of their carriers.

Incorrect comparison, the USSR developed more rockets on liquid fuel, and the United States on solid fuel.
If the issue of the dimensions and mass of the rocket, as well as the weight to be thrown, does not depend on the type of fuel, but on other factors, including the bulkiness of the electronics, let's compare not with the P39, but with the Sineva. And not Trident I, but Trident II. And here is an amazing fact, with the same casting weight and range, Sineva then turns out to be easier.

It would be interesting to compare liquid rockets on both sides, but the US quickly switched to solid rockets. Well, let's compare the liquid rockets of the times when the United States still did such
So R-5: launch weight 29 tons, maximum range 1200 km, throw weight 1350 kg, year of adoption 1966
PGM-11 Redstone: launch weight 27t, maximum range 300km, throw weight 2800kg, commissioned 1958
Is there any very noticeable difference, as in the example of P-39 and Trident?

PS Yes, it must be admitted that Russia is behind the United States in terms of solid-propellant missiles, but the topic under discussion was a little different.

[Alexey RA]

Quote: mister-red

Incorrect comparison, the USSR developed more rockets on liquid fuel, and the United States on solid fuel.
If the issue of the dimensions and mass of the rocket, as well as the weight to be thrown, does not depend on the type of fuel, but on other factors, including the bulkiness of the electronics, let's compare not with the P39, but with the Sineva. And not Trident I, but Trident II.

The comparison is correct: rockets with the same type of fuel are selected.
ZhT ICBMs will always be lighter than TT ICBMs. But the price for this is the high toxicity of the components and vulnerability to shock loads, which is especially unacceptable for SSBNs and mobile complexes (however, UDMH is not a gift for silos either). Therefore, the USSR has been working on the transfer of BR to TT for quite a long time - a government decree on the creation of a research test site No. 53 of missile and space weapons of the Ministry of Defense for testing ICBMs on solid fuel was signed already in 1963.
But until the 80s, no acceptable results were obtained (suffice it to recall the R-31, RT-2 and the "mixed" RT-20). And when it turned out, our "Trident" turned out to be much larger and heavier than the foreign one.

[mister-red]

Quote: Alexey RA

Quote: mister-red

Incorrect comparison, the USSR developed more rockets on liquid fuel, and the United States on solid fuel.
If the issue of the dimensions and mass of the rocket, as well as the weight to be thrown, does not depend on the type of fuel, but on other factors, including the bulkiness of the electronics, let's compare not with the P39, but with the Sineva. And not Trident I, but Trident II.

The comparison is correct: rockets with the same type of fuel are selected.
ZhT ICBMs will always be lighter than TT ICBMs. But the price for this is the high toxicity of the components and vulnerability to shock loads, which is especially unacceptable for SSBNs and mobile complexes (however, UDMH is not a gift for silos either). Therefore, the USSR has been working on the transfer of BR to TT for quite a long time - a government decree on the creation of a research test site No. 53 of missile and space weapons of the Ministry of Defense for testing ICBMs on solid fuel was signed already in 1963.
But until the 80s, no acceptable results were obtained (suffice it to recall the R-31, RT-2 and the "mixed" RT-20). And when it turned out, our "Trident" turned out to be much larger and heavier than the foreign one.

You're taking it out of context. Yes, you are contradicting yourself.
I gave as an example two identical liquid fuel rockets, where all the parameters are almost identical. But for solid-propellant rockets, Soviet ones are much larger in mass. This is a maximum task for the 3rd class and the conclusion is unequivocal - the problem lies somewhere in the fuel area, and not in something else. Yes, I agree and wrote that Russia still has problems with solid fuel.

[tolancop]

Another anti-Soviet (anti-Russian) vyser. The author is true to himself. The title does not match the content. The picture in the title is not at all clear what it refers to.
And, as always, the author does not disdain direct lies:
".. The Soviet answer Minuteman I used a tube computer, and the R-7 rocket (including due to the larger size of all other components) turned out to be monstrously huge compared to the American one .."
The year Minuteman development began was 1957, when the R-7 was ALREADY flying. That is, according to the author, the answer turned out before the question. But this does not bother the author. As well as a comparison of missiles of different classes. And by the way, the R-7 variants were taken out on themselves and are still taking out the Soviet (Russian) cosmonautics. And what did Minuteman take out?
"... in general, Soviet ICBMs have always been much larger than American ones, due to the backwardness of technology
As a result, for example, as a response to the compact Ohio class SSBN, the chthonic 941 Shark had to be developed - in a boat the size of the Ohio, Soviet missiles simply would not fit ... "
At least the submarine fleet did not touch. The thickness of the ice field, which the "Shark" is able to break when surfacing, I think for the "Ohio" is generally from the realm of fantasy.

Another rot in the series.

[Mikhail3]

Quote: tolancop

Another rot in the series.

Beware. Recently, a group of 8-10 people have been attacking everyone who dares to criticize the authors of all this ... information) It seems that the authorities began to pay attention to negative comments, and someone is afraid for the capitalization of ignorance ...

[Kostadinov]

The Soviet answer Minuteman I used a tube computer, and the R-7 rocket (including due to the larger size of all other components) turned out to be monstrously huge compared to the American one: the Yankees have about 29 tons and 16,3x1,68 meters against an incredible 280 tons and 34x10,3 meters.

This comparison says everything, not about missiles, but about the author.
On the R-7, the astronaut was launched into orbit.

[Vyacheslav Ermolaev]

The phrase killed "The Soviet answer Minuteman I used a tube computer, and the R-7 rocket (including due to the larger size of all other components) turned out to be monstrously huge compared to the American one: the Yankees have about 29 tons and 16,3x1,68 meters against an incredible 280 tons and 34x10,3 meters" and a reference to backward technology. Is it okay that the Minuteman I is a solid-propellant rocket, and the R-7 uses a rocket engine? Cast weight: 5400 kg, while the Minuteman I has 600 kg. Why did it take 5 tons? Yes, because the thermonuclear charge was supposed to throw RDS-6s with a capacity of 1,5 Mt and a weight of 3,4 tons. Therefore, the weight increased from the initial 170 tons to 280 tons. Are the lamps to blame? And the author did not ask the question: were they there? This is first. Secondly, the rocket was developed in 1953-1957 and it should be compared with similar Atlas liquid rockets (launch weight 117,9 tons, throw weight 1340 kg) and Titan-1 (142 tons and 2700 kg). In 1966, the UR-100 (8k84) was put into service with a maximum launch weight of 42,3 tons and a warhead of 1500 kg. This is already comparable to the Minuteman :)), and at the same time, at about the same time, the R-36 (8k63 -Satan) was adopted for service with a starting weight of 184 tons and a warhead of 5800 kg.

[Alex Nevs]

Yes, there is a cheerful rut - ... Wooden Abacus calculated the trajectory.

[meandr51]

My mother worked at NIITP (former RNII) and recalculated trajectories on arithmometers and desktop calculators after the M-20 and BESM-2 computers, together with the whole department. Calculations were accepted after the coincidence of 3 results. There were no mistakes.

[Falcon5555]

Examples with rockets are nonsense. The author of the previous post pointed out different ages and different payloads. There may also be a different quality of solid fuel (for those missiles that are on it).

Comparison of Soyuz and Shuttle watches

This is the caption for the picture. And according to the text on the left - "clock", and on the right is the board from the computer. How many chips do you need to make a clock? 100500?

[user707]

0. Thanks.
The series is very interesting, much and much "falls into place". Some remarks could be made, but after thinking it over later.
1. "The Soviet response to Minuteman I used a tube computer, and the R-7 rocket (including due to the larger size of all other components)"
I'll dig a little. The seven was no answer, it gave "well, at least some opportunity to reach out to the Americans." A reasonable possibility, not with a plane crew jumping over Mexico. There was no computer there, the SU was analog, and also with radio correction in azimuth.
BTsVK on intercontinental flights appeared along with MIRV-IN, when it became necessary to deliver warheads to trajectory positions.
Yes, and the first Soviet missile BTsVK, it seems to be one of the argons on the N-1.
Well, what did the Minuteman "take out" is not a good question in recent history. On her knowledge in real, not capkozakidai guise.
2.
"Of the LGBT chip designers of the 1960s-70s, I can immediately recall only Lynn Conway"
Also, the lady who designed the arm-a command set. Then another arm-2.
To my surprise, I found out.
Interestingly, Conway's portrait was on the cover of the world's "electronics"?
On the cover of some of the original issues (for 1979) was, sort of.

[szt1980]

These receivers are simply magical. If we want to prove the insignificance of the Staros, they are disgusting. If we want to prove the greatness of Soviet superscience, they are amazing!

"The key word here is black and white"

[Sperry]

To be honest, I myself was shocked when I dug up Burtsev’s memories specifically about Staros. Well, it’s clear that he was fulfilling Kalmykov’s order, and even after many years it would somehow be out of place to admit this and write something along the lines of “yes, he was a good man, but we trampled him.”
As a result, Burtsev so amusingly in passing inflicts a juicy kick to all the Witnesses of Microelectronics of the USSR, including Malashevich, who almost spat with delight wrote how wonderful these receivers were !! Very funny, even if they agreed which way to lie. Although the receivers themselves were in fact not bad and not good - just normal, no miracle by the standards of the United States, but quite decent for that level in the USSR, and it was really not a shame to show it at the international level, although before the integrated technology of the present there was still like to the moon with cancer.

[Alex Nevs]

I'm sorry. Are you an author?

[Sergey_1799]

The Soviet response to Minuteman I used a tube computer, and the R-7 rocket (including due to the larger size of all other components) turned out to be monstrously huge compared to the American

What is the Soviet answer? The R-7 missile appeared before Minuteman! It is necessary to drive such hacks in the neck, so as not to be branded as a yellow press.

[viktor_ui]

Who cares, but the post is AWESOME and made me remember how it all began for me personally in 87 ... RESPECT to Alexei and I definitely look forward to continuing!
small-bellied controversial points are not considered.

[Mikhail3]

Mdja ...
Well. The calloused hands of Soviet assemblers are to blame for everything. That's what I thought... So people are trying to make a transistor. They never made transistors. The equipment, on which no one has ever made transistors, does not want to give a result. What is unusual about this? Never mind. It always happens, you have to work. And how do the authors of the sidebars solve problems?
They want Japanese equipment. And why? My friend, because ... The neighboring "firms" that made the "electronic guns" are enemies. And the engineers just giggle at how they fail. What would engineers who focused on solving the problem do? Such engineers would begin to analyze the marriage, looking for the reasons for the failures, then they would either correct the equipment themselves, or, as the reasons were found, would issue corrections to the technical specification to the manufacturers.
What did these guys do? They, over and over again, tried to fashion a circuit on the same equipment, wondering why it didn’t work out. They rip off everything from the prey of the first department! Ugh ... Finally, the boss guesses to hire a person who seems to understand something. All the rest, firstly, do not understand either the ear or the snout, and secondly, they do not know what to do in this case! If there was at least one pro, the description would contain something like the following:
Analyzed section of the conductive track to the logic element. Traces of aluminum were found, which was not removed by the burning operation. The solution is to calibrate the operation by developing a new operating mode.
Did the author of the text in the sidebar do this? Not a trace! Not a single attempt at normal analytical work was made! The invited Varangian apparently guessed (since there is no trace of information that he used the results of the analysis of his colleagues) that he was stupidly short somewhere, looked at the composition, relied on aluminum and began to do what only a qualified loner among stupid careerists can do - he scored a marriage and began to heat it, raising the temperature from experience to experience. research that he could only do alone, without the help of oak-like colleagues.
Conclusions. Comrade Shokin completely ruined his ministry with absolutely poor management. Most of these guys should have been sent to the court of revenge ... A huge role was played by the leadership from the party, which is not only a layman in this particular topic, but also completely ignorant in the very technique of managing labor collectives and methods for finding engineering and technical solutions. Simply put, the party bosses allowed themselves to be ignorant and lazy.
That's what hit us on the head! Crap...

[military_cat]

Quote: Mikhail3

Comrade Shokin completely ruined his ministry with absolutely poor management. Most of these guys should have been sent to the court of revenge ... A huge role was played by the leadership from the party, which is not only a layman in this particular topic, but also completely ignorant in the very technique of managing labor collectives and methods for finding engineering and technical solutions.

The problem is that the person who is authorized to decide who should be sent to the court of revenge - himself, in a good way, should have been sent to the court of revenge. And so to the very top. And it will not be otherwise, because when the system is built on the selection of managers who are not interested in working for the result, it will gradually rot from any initial state. It's just a matter of time. And GB is not a panacea, as it is subject to the same processes.

[Mikhail3]

Exactly. It was not possible to build a system of selection and correct work with the management. Mankind had to move from the control of external stimuli (death, pain, hunger, lust for power) to internal ones - reason, planning, scientific foresight and solving problems by scientific methods. And the USSR did not succeed enchantingly. That Shokin, that the party leadership became the leadership to eat sweetly, sleep softly, do nothing and command people whom they were unworthy of commanding. All their actions were subject to their primitive desires and dreams. Dreams, to put it mildly, primitive. And so it didn't work...
Socialism is inevitable, because the alternative, life according to the algorithm of the tribe hiding in the cave and the law of the chicken coop reigning in it, leads humanity to death. Judging by biological data, this is not the first and not the second humanity on our planet that has not coped with such a transition and will again self-destruct. Sadness...

[UA3QHP]

All the rest, firstly, do not understand either the ear or the snout, and secondly, they do not know what to do in this case!

Taking into account the fact that the industry was just in its infancy and no one understood a single ear or snout. A very non-trivial task, when there are no specialists (have not yet learned) no equipment (have not done it yet) and they do not really understand what and how to do. And the result is required.

[Mikhail3]

There is a theory of adjustment! At one time, I was literally frozen out by the illiteracy of Soviet engineers in this matter. The fact is that in fact, EVERYTHING IS LIKELY what to adjust. The approaches to this process are the same, and they always, in one hundred percent of cases, lead to success. True, the conclusion that the direction is one hundred percent a dead end is also considered a success, and it must be abandoned.
But if there is a working sample of the device that you are trying to fix, then there can be no question that the work cannot be done. If at least someone on earth has done it at least once, you can definitely succeed.
In this particular case, everything is so stupid that tears come out of my eyes) here even the theory of adjustment is not very good ... There are only two malfunctions in electrical engineering - there is no contact where it is necessary, and there is contact where it is not necessary. The question didn’t even reach the electronics, the problem was in the aluminum shorting the tracks. Do not check electrical engineering, trying to stupidly reproduce the stolen process technology... You can't call these people engineers. They were not at all.

[UA3QHP]

The question didn’t even reach the electronics, the problem was in the aluminum shorting the tracks.

In this case, the problem was that aluminum did not provide the required quality of ohmic contact to silicon. But the theory that explained the conditions for its receipt has not yet been. Therefore, they poked almost at random. Plus, the rest of the technological processes were, so to speak, at the initial level.
There are many such subtleties in microelectronics, everything seems to work, "but there is one caveat"

[Mikhail3]

That's right, and the specific reason is not important. What is important is the lack of a systematic approach and scientific research as such. What is the author of the sidebar telling us? He says that he tried to repeat the stolen technical process over and over again, without even trying to investigate the causes of failures. Instead of research, which apparently was beyond their brains - "we are no system engineers, we stole the scheme," these guys hired a person who seemed to understand something. That's the problem, and not whether there was a short circuit or there was no contact

[UA3QHP]

Well, they found all the same person who was able to solve the problem. This, by the way, is also one of the solutions. In the United States, this is very often practiced.
And about

That Shokin, that the party leadership became the leadership to eat sweetly, sleep softly, do nothing and command people whom they were unworthy of commanding. All their actions were subject to their primitive desires and dreams. Dreams, to put it mildly, primitive. And so it didn't work...

Shokin was appointed to organize an industry that not only had never existed in the USSR and Russia, but also had no analogues before that, which could be relied upon. Everything was created from scratch. And in the shortest possible time began to receive serial production.
For example:
decision on the construction of the VZPP - December 31, 1957
The first batch of diodes was released on June 18, 1959.
The first silicon transistor - 1961
And this despite the fact that in 1958 part of the city is still in ruins, specialists in microelectronics and semiconductor production are ZERO. And throughout the USSR there are not very many of them.

[Mikhail3]

No, they didn’t) Because he didn’t solve the problem, and they didn’t solve it. The solution to the problem would be equipment on which processors could be produced. And not a cocktail of stolen and bought over the hill. Therefore, instead of electronics, we had such shameful shit. In which really good things floated in small islands, which individual enthusiasts did in spite of Shokin. And the shokins eventually destroyed them all, even the military laboratories managed to nullify them. So that they do not shine, it means ...

[UA3QHP]

Yeah, but first organizing them.

[Mikhail3]

Oh yes) Straight Shokin organized military teams) He also organized spots on the Sun and the Milky Way.

[AB]

Interesting article. The main thing is objectivity. Thanks a lot!

[gla172]

Strong article!

[lopvlad]

Soviet CMOS is 90% related to microprocessors - clones of Intel

not clones, but functional analogues. At the same time, among the "Soviet cmos", it produced many such microcircuits of functional analogues that were not in sight in the West.

[Egg]

On the one hand, the article was written by a knowledgeable person, but on the other hand ... it’s necessary to so subtly cheat and slander everything that our fathers and grandfathers created ...
And I don’t agree about the backlogs in electronics, lamp technology was used in military affairs because of the protection from EMR, on purpose, and not because of backwardness. And the decisions there were such that the vaunted states never dreamed of.
The article makes me feel disgusting....

[MrFox]

TTL is not only amplification, but also a fast recharge of parasitic capacitances -> performance

[meandr51]

The first Soviet anti-missile missiles intercepted an ICBM warhead already in 1962! Americans are 20 years behind. Soviet systems often used analog logic that worked faster than digital. The mathematical base allowed.

[tolancop]

Quote: Ryaruav

a good article for specialists, but at least someone answer the question why a country that produced excellent aviation, good missiles lagged behind in radio engineering and agriculture, just some kind of rock over the country, and what about chemistry there?

And you can’t be ahead of the rest in ALL directions, there won’t be enough resources. They lagged behind in electronics, IMHO, largely because electronics is the very edge of progress. Physics, chemistry, technology, culture of design and production, etc. Remove one of the components and everything will fall apart. And all components require a certain level to which you need to GROW. And this is time, experience, etc. You can spend huge efforts on developing some of the most modern products, but not be able to do it, because the production base has not matured.

[swzero]

The dimensions of the R7 and the Shark SSBN have nothing to do with electronics at all.

[Barmal]

Didn't read it. The feeling that I put my hands in a bucket of shit.

[Dmitry Vladimirovich]

Museum of Electronic Rarities
582nd series 4-bit parallel microprocessor with the possibility of increasing the capacity (a multiple of 4 bits); R&D "Trotil-2", completed in the 1st quarter of 1979.
On this microcircuit, in particular, the onboard computer "Biser-4" was implemented for the control system of the orbital ship "Buran"

http://www.155la3.ru/k582.htm
and Intel 8086 16-bit microprocessor 1978

There is a difference.

[Dmitry Vladimirovich]

But if we compare the BTsVK to the Space Shuttle and Buran - the Buran BTsVM is more perfect than the first Shutlovsky

https://pikabu.ru/story/sravnenie_btsvkspace_shuttle_i_ok_buran_v_chislakh_mog_li_shattl_sovershit_avtomaticheskiy_polet_6254693
The AP-101 SS processor module was made on the basis of TTL chips of medium and high degree of integration, designed on a chassis board, which is easy to replace in case of a breakdown. The processor worked with 16 or 32-bit instructions and data in integer mode. With floating point, it processed 32, 40 and 64-bit data at an average speed of 480k instructions per second.
Taking into account that the shuttles began to be built in 1975, and the ISC "Buran" since 1980, the lag is not significant.

[Protos]

A bunch of anti-Soviet myths from the 90s in half with useful info!
I recognize the underline of liberals and hangers-on of the enemies of Russia

[ivan2022]

Quote: DED_peer_DED

Missed the beginning, delayed the continuation.

1. No need to lie. The first Soviet computer M1 started working in 1952. And in Japan, the first one is 1955. You seem to have missed this fact.
2. As for "they dragged out the continuation" - in China, in general, only Red Guards ran around Beijing with quotes until the mid-70s. And now it's not all bad. They have.
3. It is necessary to work, and not to look for "Lenin's mines."

[ivan2022]

Quote: Telur

On the one hand, the article was written by a knowledgeable person, but on the other hand ... it’s necessary to so subtly cheat and slander everything that our fathers and grandfathers created ...
And I don’t agree about the backlogs in electronics, lamp technology was used in military affairs because of the protection from EMR, on purpose, and not because of backwardness. And the decisions there were such that the vaunted states never dreamed of.
The article makes me feel disgusting....

The most interesting thing is that there are "electronic engineers" whose life's work the author poured over with shit, but they express their delight and respect to the author. Fine ? In my opinion, no.

[Amalgam Z]

"The Soviet response to Minuteman I used a tube computer, and the R-7 rocket (including due to the larger size of all other components) turned out to be monstrously huge compared to the American one: the Yankees have about 29 tons and 16,3x1,68 meters against incredible 280 tons and 34x10,3 meters.Even the monstrous LGM-25C Titan II had a size of 31,4x3,05 meters and a mass of 154 tons, in general, Soviet ICBMs have always been much larger than American ones, due to the backwardness of technology. " The rocket began development in 52, when there was not a single transistor computer and with a "thrown load" 10 times greater than that of the Minitimen for a slightly shorter distance of 9k km versus 10k km. And so Minitimen began to be developed in response to Sputnik, which was launched on P7. There is no need to explain what the crazy annual progress in rocket science of the 50s and 60s is. As soon as the author gets out from behind the translations of Western advertising books on computers, he immediately plunges into mistakes and stupidity. That is why the general impression of a series of articles is a vinaigrette with interesting Surnames from the industry (every fact about which must be checked, because it is full of errors and subjectivity) with stupid mistakes, distortions and anti-Sovietism.

[Akim]

"In 1990-2000, Intel already had to catch up with AMD."
Something I don’t remember is that in the 90s, in the field of CPUs for PCs, Intel had to chase AMD. In the mid-90s, AMD cloned the Intel architecture 80486 CPU quite successfully (although whoever cloned it then .. and the previous 8086, 80286, 80386 AMD cloned itself quite well), releasing their Am486 and Am5x86 (I had an Am5x86 133 MHz processor in the first home PC). But the AMD K5 and K6 CPUs had to be made on their own architecture (so as not to run into litigation with Intel), the processors turned out to be very hot and did not reach the "stumps" in terms of performance. Everything that AMD produced up to the A64 generation (and I used all these Athlones on Thunderbird, Palomino, Thoroughbred, Barton), except for the price, there was no competition for Intel. Yes, the architecture of the K8 was successful (I had 3 CPUs - 3200+, 3500+ and X2 4600+), and Intel suffered towards the "long conveyor", "inflated" megahertz and high temperatures. But AMD did not rest on its laurels for long, because. Intel abandoned netburst, quickly blew the dust off the P6 architecture, on which their Pentium III series processors were based, rethought it, flavored it with x64 and rolled out Core2Duo, after which AMD again moved to the rank of catching up for many years, despite its Athlones, Phenoms and the first series of Ryzens, and Intel calmly and leisurely stamped out its i3 / i5 / i7, changing only the "generation" number and not greatly raising the performance (suffice it to say that the i5-750 personally served me from 2010 to 2020 and still works properly on my son's computer). And only with the release of AMD processors on the Zen 2 architecture, we can probably say that a certain parity has taken place (better in some tasks, worse in others), and with the release of Zen 3, AMD still managed to overtake Intel. But this happened just a couple of years ago, and not in the 90s-2000s.