Chuck Peddle Passes

[jim bell]

 On Wednesday, December 25, 2019, 12:40:41 PM PST, Punk-Stasi 2.0 <punks at tfwno.gf> wrote:
 
 On Wed, 25 Dec 2019 10:22:51 -0800
Razer <g2s at riseup.net> wrote:

> 
>> Like Tim May, a Santa Cruzer who really didn't give fux for
>> moneygrubbing techie libertards infesting the industry.

    
>    your view of may seems pretty idealized. May was a self-described 'anarchocapitalist', he liked the randroid cunt and he got some million dollars* working for flagship americunt govcorp mafia intel. 

 >   IIRC I read somewhere that may left the cpunks list because it was renamed/hosted at al-qaeda.net. 

>    he certainly was better educated that the typical rethuglican 'libertarian' but that bar is pretty low. 

>*not really sure about the figure, maybe around a hundred million dollars?

You probably don't realize it, but during the time  (1979)? Tim May became famous for discovering that alpha particles created soft errors (mostly in DRAM), Intel was a relatively small (15,000 employees) backwater IC company.  Intel didn't really get big and famous until IBM chose the 8088 microprocessor for their original IBM PC.  
In fact, I suspected then that the reason IBM chose the 8088 was that Intel was small enough so that they (IBM) figured they could manipulate Intel.   The company which made an alternative, Motorola with their 68000, was huge and even IBM couldn't have controlled it.   The 68000 would have made a much-better PC, and it would presumably have been made with a 16-bit data bus, instead of the original PC's silly 8-bit data bus.  (One theory was that IBM deliberately "dumbed down" the original 8088 PC to ensure it didn't compete with IBM's low-end computer selection.)
And, the ultimate solution to the alpha-particle was to change the chemistry of the DRAM chips so that they wouldn't have to be contained in a hermetically sealed package, like a CERDIP (think Oreo cookie) or a ceramic package.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_in-line_package  (However, that article sorta confuses "CERDIPS" with ceramic packages.)



  Alpha particles were emitted by high-atomic-weight nuclei in the ceramic; purifying that ceramic to remove such elements would have been expensive, negating the advantage of using CERDIP in the first place.    Plastic, on the other hand, are made with extremely low atomic-weight elements (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen) which cannot emit alpha particles.  
                     Jim Bell






  
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