3 ms·
> Intel had weird beliefs about keeping the pin count down. They might seem weird by today's standards, but by late 1970's standards, a '40 pin' package was si
by pwg 4y ago
> Intel had weird beliefs about keeping the pin count down.
They might seem weird by today's standards, but by late 1970's standards, a '40 pin' package was significantly cheaper for others to incorporate into their designs than another size. There were a lot fewer "standard socket sizes" available back then, and anything that wasn't already available entailed a lot of expense to manufacture, resulting in a very high initial cost (comparatively) to recover the capital expenditure to bring the new size to production.
- kens 4y agoIntel's beliefs about pin count were weird even for the time. See Federico Faggin's oral history (p55-56) for a discussion about how making everything 16 pins was like a religion at Intel, damaging functionality, at a time when other companies had 40 or 48 pin packages. The Motorola 68000 had 64 pins. http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/Faggin_Federico/Faggin_Federico_1_2_3.oral_history.2004.102658025.pdf http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_Histo...