By the late seventies, it was becoming clear to all chip makers that microprocessors were a big deal. At first, even Intel didn’t take microprocessors seriously, they were a memory maker. They sold millions of memory chips. How many microprocessors could their be a market for? Well, the answer was a lot. Electronics designers were using logic chips to build intelligence into products. These logic chips holding ANDs, ORs, NOTs, and what not, were used on circuits boards to program the intelligence into a machine. If the “program” needed to be changed, a new circuit board with different chips, in different circuits, would need to be created. Needless to say a bug on board was an expensive proposition. So, the idea that these physical circuits could represented “virtually” as microprocessor instructions held in memory, that could be easily changed, was huge. However, with a industry full of electrical engineers, how do you transition to “hardware programming” to “software programming”? Intel initially referred to the Intel 4004 microprocessor, as a random logic processor. The “random logic” being in opposite to the fixed methodology of chips on a board. Personally, I would have called it variable logic, not random logic, but no asked me. Intel did not make logic chips and, as I mentioned before, they made memory chips. When Intel execs finally got interested in microprocessors, it was because they realized that microprocessors, and memory, could replace whole boards of logic chips. Microprocessors were great, not for sake of the microprocessor’s bright future, it was because the microprocessor could sell more memory chips…
During this period we were on the 3rd and 4th generations of chip making technologies, yields were going up, costs going down. Companies were producing sets of chips that supported their microprocessor making designer’s jobs much easier, and we saw the beginnings of software development tools.
| Year | Qtr | AMI | AMD | Fairchild | GI | Hitachi | Intel |
| 1977 | 1Q | HCMS44, HCMS45 | 8035, 8048, 8748 | ||||
| 2Q | PIC 1650 | ||||||
| 3Q | |||||||
| 4Q | 29032910 |
| 1978 | 1Q | 3870,9440 | HCMS43,HCMS43C | 8021, 8039,8049 | |||
| 2Q | HCMS42 | 8086 | |||||
| 3Q | |||||||
| 4Q | 8022 |
| 1979 | 1Q | 4705/4708 | |||||
| 2Q | S2000,S2150 | 8088 | |||||
| 3Q | 100220 | ||||||
| 4Q | 8089 |
| Year | Qtr | Motorola | NS | NEC | Panasonic | SMC | TI |
| 1977 | 1Q | 6802, 08 | 57140 | uCOM-42(uPD548) | SBP9900 | ||
| 2Q | uCOM-43 | ||||||
| 3Q | 8900 | uCOM-44 | |||||
| 4Q | uCOM-45 | MN1400 | 74481/ 74482, 54481/ 54482 |
| 1978 | 1Q | ||||||
| 2Q | |||||||
| 3Q | TMS1000C, TMS1200C | ||||||
| 4Q | 6801, 03, 68701 | COP402,COP420, 21, 22, 321, 22COP420, 21, 22 | TMS9985 |
| 1979 | 1Q | 3870, 6805, 6809, 14500B, | TMS9940 | ||||
| 2Q | 68000 | COP410, 11, 310, 11, COP404, | 9980 | ||||
| 3Q | COP444, 45 | ||||||
| 4Q |
| Year | Qtr | WD | Zilog |
| 1977 | 1Q | ||||||
| 2Q | |||||||
| 3Q | WD40(CR1872, 2872) | ||||||
| 4Q |
| 1978 | 1Q | ||||||
| 2Q | |||||||
| 3Q | |||||||
| 4Q |
| 1979 | 1Q | CP9008 | Z8000 (Z8001, 02) | ||||
| 2Q | |||||||
| 3Q | Z8 (Z8601, 02, 11, 12) | ||||||
| 4Q |