Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YDRjtmAiNpo5mK5N3d7QwZ
23 lines
1.3 KiB
Markdown
23 lines
1.3 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: '4164'
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date: '1978-10-01'
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years:
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- '1978'
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topics:
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- Hardware
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params:
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when: OCTOBER 1978
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oc_id: 43
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source:
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url: https://web.archive.org/web/20221215134357/http://www.old-computers.com/history/detail.asp?n=43
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date: '2022-12-15'
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---
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The 4164 was quite a mythical memory chip. It contained 65535 bits of RAM memory, four times more than its predecessor, the 4116. Eight chips were thus needed to obtain 64 Kbytes of RAM. After a short period of low sales level, the famous 8 x 4164 RAM chips equipped quite every computer which featured at least 64 KB of RAM.\
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\>br> Texas Instruments launched the first samples of its TMS-4164 in late October 1978 at about... $170 per unit! However T.I. was not the first company to produce such chip. Japanese companies already manufactured the same chip for a few months, and the battle for international supremacy over RAM chips and computer components started with the 4164.\
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\>br> First, sales of the chip were modest. About 36.000 were sold worldwide in 1978-79 but they rocketed to some 13 million units in 1980-81. The Japanese captured 70 percent of the market. Sale price went from over $100 to $25 then $5, and remained the same throughout the following years.
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