About this Artwork:

This artwork is a mixed media display celebrating the Emitter-Coupled Logic chip. Logic chips were the first silicon based integrated circuits. Prior to logic chips, components such as transistors, diodes, resistors, inductors, and capacitors were created individually. These discrete components were soldered to printed circuit cards, which had metal traces to connect the components. With logic chips, all components in the circuit were created at the same time, on one piece of silicon. This process, called etching, created the components by depositing layers of silicon, treated with impurities. These N-type and P-type silicon layers provided the semiconductor effect. Initially, integrated circuits had less than 10 transistors. These chips implemented simple logic gates, hence their name. Various technologies were used to create these early chips. The fastest of these was Emitter Coupled Logic. ECL circuits prevented transistor saturation, which dramatically decreased switching time. Early mainframe computers, such as IBM’s, utilized this technology to provide high performance. 

This artwork includes 3 major items. It has a large image of an ECL chip. On the back are the artist’s signature and a narrative describing the artwork and the ECL chip. Also, the artwork includes a rare NOS Motorola MC358G ECL chip. The MC358G was a single bit J-K Flip-Flop, one of the very early solid state storage devices.