Bigger and better?

Abstract

Competition for the title of manufacturer of the RAM chip with the most storage was rife at the International Solid State Circuits conference (10–12 February 1982, San Francisco). IBM claims, not only that it beat the Japanese to the first commercial 64 kbit RAM back in 1979, but also that it has a 72 kbit chip in mass production and by quadrupling the storage and only doubling the area (while applying basically the same technology) it has achieved a 288 kbit chip with 'nonzero yield' (see Financial Times 17 February 1982).