A New Fire - ChipScapes Original 16x20

When events begin to occur with some regularity it is said to be trend. Some years ago author John Naisbitt, coined the term Megatrends to describe major game-changing, business-changing, and life-changing trends. The challenge with spotting Megatrends is to be able to view many events, with a very open eye, and then be able to put these events into context to see a pattern emerging. I doubt the folks at Intel, even as they were working to create their second microprocessor, the 8008, could see the microprocessor revolution coming. I’m sure the people at Texas Instruments struggling to get their microprocessor completed didn’t. Nor the people at Rockwell, or any of the companies investigating this new technology. Within a couple of years this trend became apparent to all in the industry, but these early hot spots of technology only appear to be a Megatrend when looking back with hindsight.

Not to take anything away from the Intel 4004, as it was the first microprocessor, but it is the 8008’s architecture that lives on, not the 4004’s. The 8008 spread the fire that the 4004 started, a new fire in the semiconductor industry. Microprocessor technology spread as fast as a wildfire and within 5 years the landscape of the industry was completely changed. The subject of “A New Fire” is an Intel 8008. This image is of a section near the ALU (Arithmetic and Logic Unit). The silver lines are aluminum traces. The red and green lines are the N-type and P-type silicon used to build the transistors on the silicon wafer. My thought in shooting this section, with this lighting, was to emphasize the reds and oranges to get the effect of a fire flowing upward, the 8008’s new fire.