25 Microchips That Shook the World

[soundsop]

http://spectrum.ieee.org/may09/8747

[dthakur]

The print version has everything on one page: http://spectrum.ieee.org/print/8747

[ableal]

Another two workhorse candidates:

- The 7400 TTL quad 2-input NAND gate (pre-1970, TI and others?). And family ... many other pages in the catalog.

- The 2408 1kB UV-erasable EPROM (~1980, Intel), and siblings: 2416 2kB, etc.

Perhaps also the 2900 4-bit slice ALU from AMD, possibly more often admired than actually used ;-)

[joe_bleau → ableal]

You may be right about the 2900, but I think that one of the 2900 books ("Bit-slice Microprocessor Design" by Mick and Brick) could be considered very influential to a certain generation of older digital designer.

Thanks for bringing this up--I'll need to add a copy to my library now!