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The team behind the chip that launched a revolution – the 6502
- martyvis 5y agoA nice answer from Harry Bawcom, the Layout Designer: "Q: What do you recall about the lawsuit Motorola filed against MOS Technology? A: I remember part of the Motorola lawsuit was about the speed of creation of the 6502, particularly the layout. Though I don't have a copy of the lawsuit, my memory says that a major point of the lawsuit was that we stole the layout and did not create it anew. This is because a major problem chip designers had in that era was getting a design through the bottleneck of layout. And though it took seven man years for the 6800 (I came in at the end of the 6800 project), it only took one man year for the 6502, therefore we had to have stolen the layout. We did not. Speed was my skill. You could hire a good engineer by looking at his education and accomplishments. Layout was more of an art and a difficult problem for chip design managers and engineers to solve. Today it is done by computer."