Misplaced Pages

#902097

86-413: Orders for the machine were reported in late 1986, with an initial 500 units to be rebadged by Thorn EMI Business Communications for its own customers and approximately 1400 units going to Pickfords Travel for use in its high street stores. As a "smart videotex terminal" and a "complete turnkey comms solution" featuring Prestel connectivity and built-in word processing and spreadsheet capabilities,

172-625: A Ferranti -manufactured ULA, indicating that a Mietec IC with an Acorn part number of 0252,602 could possibly be a ULA from another source. According to archived Acorn product documentation, it is indeed a ULA, although the system documentation refers to it as a video ULA, despite it also providing support for the keyboard and sound generation. The system documentation notes the presence of 32 KB of video RAM (accessed at 1 MHz), 512 KB or 1 MB of system RAM (accessed at 2 MHz), 32 KB of non-volatile RAM , up to 512 KB of internal ROM, and up to 3.5 MB of ROM accessible via

258-720: A prefabricated chip with components that are later interconnected into logic devices (e.g. NAND gates , flip-flops , etc.) according to custom order by adding metal interconnect layers in the factory. It was popular during the upheaval in the semiconductor industry in the 1980s, and its usage declined by the end of the 1990s. Similar technologies have also been employed to design and manufacture analog, analog-digital, and structured arrays, but, in general, these are not called gate arrays. Gate arrays have also been known as uncommitted logic array s ('ULAs'), which also offered linear circuit functions, and semi-custom chips . Gate arrays had several concurrent development paths. Ferranti in

344-413: A "100-percent success auto-layout system" with this convenience incurring an increase in silicon area of approximately 25 percent. Other British companies developed products for gate array design and fabrication. Qudos Limited, a spin-off from Cambridge University, offered a chip design product called Quickchip available for VAX and MicroVAX II systems and as a complete $ 11,000 turnkey solution, providing

430-434: A (typically) 200x to 400x scale representation of the process layer. This was then photo-reduced to make a 1x mask. Digitization rather than rubylith cutting was just coming in as the latest technology, but initially, it only removed the rubylith stage; drawings were still manual and then "hand" digitized. PC boards, meanwhile, had moved from custom rubylith to PC tape for interconnects. IMI created to-scale photo enlargements of

516-756: A ULA chip for the ZX81 , and later used a ULA in the ZX Spectrum . A compatible chip was made in Russia as T34VG1. Acorn Computers used several ULA chips in the BBC Micro , and later a single ULA for the Acorn Electron . Many other manufacturers from the time of the home computer boom period used ULAs in their machines. The IBM PC took over much of the personal computer market, and the sales volumes made full-custom chips more economical. Commodore's Amiga series used gate arrays for

602-675: A complete circuit on the same or later metal layers. The creation of a circuit with a specified function is accomplished by adding this final layer or layers of metal interconnects to the chip late in the manufacturing process, allowing the function of the chip to be customized as desired. These layers are analogous to the copper layers of a printed circuit board . The earliest gate arrays comprised bipolar transistors , usually configured as high-performance transistor–transistor logic , emitter-coupled logic , or current-mode logic logic configurations. CMOS (complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor ) gate arrays were later developed and came to dominate

688-585: A different colour but, in the case of the E01 unit, also providing different software. The E01S unit was also usable by the Communicator and could be expanded by the E40S and E60S hard disk units. The Communicator provided an office software suite, including View (word processor), ViewSheet (spreadsheet), Videotex and VT100 terminal emulation , plus Econet local area networking, a telephone line input port for connection to

774-463: A disk drive) nor a connector for an external storage mechanism, although the C series brochure mentions a 3.5-inch disk drive as an option. A separate file and print server "in the same style as the Communicator itself" offering floppy and hard drive support plus a Centronics printer interface , based on the MOS Technology 6512 CPU and having 64 KB RAM plus 64 KB ROM, was intended to be

860-564: A fast-moving industry became hyper-competitive. The many new entrants to the market drove gate array prices down to the marginal costs of the silicon manufacturers. Fabless companies such as LSI Logic and CDI survived on selling design services and computer time rather than on production revenues. As of the early 21st century, the gate array market was a remnant of its former self, driven by the FPGA conversions done for cost or performance reasons. IMI moved out of gate arrays into mixed-signal circuits and

946-420: A minor modification to the height of the keyboard and a slight extension of the keyboard "to accommodate another row of function keys". The Communicator was envisaged as being an always-on device, capable of being programmed to access online services at predetermined times, and it was therefore decided not to provide a power switch on the unit itself. Alongside its personal computer features, an Acorn brochure for

SECTION 10

#1732852418903

1032-470: A number of other major British technology companies. IBM developed proprietary bipolar master slices that it used in mainframe manufacturing in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but never commercialized them externally. Fairchild Semiconductor also flirted briefly in the late 1960s with bipolar arrays diode–transistor logic and transistor-transistor logic called Micromosaic and Polycell. CMOS (complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor ) technology opened

1118-554: A personal computer, desirable features included the ability to run existing business software, offer networking support and connectivity to mainframes , connect to public data services such as Prestel and Telecom Gold mailboxes, and also support services over other cable-based infrastructure (such as cable television infrastructure then being introduced in the United Kingdom). A meeting between Curry and product design consultant David Morgan, who had approached Acorn with an idea for

1204-430: A personal computer, led to a deeper collaboration that would establish the nature of the Communicator's physical characteristics. Intending for the product to be customised and sold by other vendors, an emphasis was placed on a physical product design that would permit such customisation and offer a degree of modularity. Thus, a "basic keyboard unit" would be central in any eventual product configuration, being augmented by

1290-406: A product line competitive to IMI and, shortly thereafter, a 5-micron silicon gate single-layer product line with densities of up to 1,200 gates. A couple of years later, CDI followed up with "channel-less" gate arrays that reduced the row blockages caused by a more complex silicon underlayer that pre-wired the individual transistor connections to locations needed for common logic functions, simplifying

1376-519: A successor to the Electron being readied for launch, despite such speculation ultimately proving to be about the Master Compact. In 1986, Acorn co-founder Chris Curry was reported to have recruited the team responsible for developing the Communicator - 12 employees in all including technical project manager Ram Bannerjee - for his new company, General Information Systems, with one potential application of

1462-417: A suite of tools broadly similar to those of Ferranti's products including automatic layout, routing, rule checking and simulation functionality for the design of gate arrays. Qudos employed electron beam lithography, etching designs onto Ferranti ULA devices that formed the physical basis of these custom chips. Typical prototype production costs were stated as £100 per chip. Quickchip was subsequently ported to

1548-466: A telephone, display, storage, printer and other peripherals and accessories. Although Morgan had proposed an electroluminescent display within a lid folding shut over the keyboard in an arrangement that would become common with laptop computers, cost and reliability concerns directed the design towards an optional LCD display and the use of a separate monitor. Alongside the industrial design activity, Ram Bannerjee of Acorn's research and development division

1634-410: Is determined by estimates such as those derived from Rent's rule or by experiments with existing designs. The main drawbacks of gate arrays are their somewhat lower density and performance compared with other approaches to ASIC design. However, this style is often a viable approach for low production volumes. Gate arrays were used widely in the home computers in the early to mid 1980s, including in

1720-640: Is now owned by DeLonghi . Following the merger, EMI's film division was renamed Thorn EMI Screen Entertainment. The newly merged company continued the film interests EMI had acquired over the preceding decade; these had included the former Associated British Picture Corporation , and their facilities at Elstree Studios, Shenley Road, Borehamwood and ABC Cinemas . Thorn EMI Video was established in 1981. Thorn EMI released films on video from various film companies including Orion Pictures ( First Blood , The Terminator ), New Line Cinema ( The Evil Dead , Xtro ), and Universal ( Bad Boys , Frances ) in

1806-596: The 8-bit MOS Technology 6502 or variants, which were used by virtually all of Acorn's previous microcomputer products. 128  KB or 512 KB RAM could be fitted, expandable to 1024 KB. For display capabilities, it employs the ULA originally developed for the Electron (reputed to be the largest ULA or gate array ever developed at that time) and supported a monochrome version of Teletext using software emulation for access to services such as Prestel . Full-colour teletext

SECTION 20

#1732852418903

1892-532: The Acorn Cambridge Workstation , with a low-end version for the BBC Micro , and to the Acorn Archimedes . Indirect competition arose with the development of the field-programmable gate array (FPGA). Xilinx was founded in 1984, and its first products were much like early gate arrays, slow and expensive, fit only for some niche markets. However, Moore's Law quickly made them a force and, by

1978-532: The HMV stores. In 1987, Thorn EMI acquired Rent-A-Center in the United States for $ 594 million which had 469 stores on acquisition. In 1989, Rumbelows was acquired by Radio Rentals and all Rumbelows' rental accounts were transferred to Radio Rentals, bolstering its market position. With its core business removed, Rumbelows sought a new identity as a more conventional (non-rental) retailer, even adding computers to

2064-498: The public switched telephone network (PSTN), an RS423 serial port for connection to serial printers or other computers, and a Centronics parallel port to connect a printer. The system software that bound the packages together was a mixture of BBC Basic and assembly language . The software development team was led by Paul Bond, who led development of the original Acorn MOS, a keen pilot who would occasionally fly team members in his Cessna when things were quiet. First versions of

2150-579: The 140 Dillons bookstore locations. Of the remaining 100 stores, most kept the name Dillons, while the remainder were Hatchards and Hodges Figgis . The EMI label expanded greatly as part of Thorn EMI. In 1989, Thorn EMI bought a 50% interest in Chrysalis Records , buying the outstanding 50% in 1991. In one of its highest-profile and most expensive acquisitions, Thorn EMI took over Richard Branson 's Virgin Records in 1992 for £510 million. Thorn EMI

2236-480: The 1970s. However, by 1982, as many as 30 companies had started to compete with Ferranti, reducing the company's market share to around 30 percent. Ferranti's "major competitors" were other British companies such as Marconi and Plessey, both of which had licensed technology from another British company, Micro Circuit Engineering. A contemporary initiative, UK5000, also sought to produce a CMOS gate array with "5,000 usable gates", with involvement from British Telecom and

2322-450: The 1980s. Thorn EMI joined HBO in November 1984 to create Thorn EMI/HBO Video. In April 1986, Thorn EMI sold Thorn EMI Screen Entertainment and the film library, Thorn EMI Video, and ABC Cinemas to businessman Alan Bond . Bond, in turn, sold it to The Cannon Group a week later. HBO maintained an involvement the video company, which became HBO/Cannon Video. Cannon left operations and

2408-521: The C series brochure notes a "cable TV interface for teletext" as optional. The microcassette facilities featured in the C series brochure were reportedly prototyped as a peripheral, and the telephone handset featured in the brochure was supported by an optional bracket. General expansion capabilities were provided by an " Electron -style expansion connector" as also featured in the Master Compact . The machine offered no built-in storage mechanism (such as

2494-457: The C series describes a range of telephony facilities offered by the product range including auto-dialling and auto-answering for data and electronic mail, call answering and message storage using optional microcassette hardware, and telex sending. Microcassettes could also support dictation. A real-time clock , perpetual calendar, desk diary and calculator are featured. The system uses a 16-bit Western Design Center 65816 chip rather than

2580-547: The Communicator as intended for original equipment manufacturer (OEM) use was centred on the BBC Master 128 with ARM second processor, floppy and hard drives, a monochrome monitor, and an external ROM expansion. The provided development tools included the TWIN editor, MASM assembler (supporting the 65SC816 instruction set ), and the 65TURBO emulator for running the tools and utilities written for 6502-based machines. Ultimately,

2666-466: The Communicator were monochrome -only; later (but before first customer delivery), a daughterboard provided full colour. A briefcase version of the Communicator was apparently offered as the Spectar II by Advanced Medical Communications, supposedly for use by pharmaceutical company representatives, offering a bar code reader and "credit-card size memory packs", with one version having "a flat screen in

Acorn Communicator - Misplaced Pages Continue

2752-411: The Communicator, being a product from Acorn's custom systems division, was apparently abandoned when that division was closed having contributed to "more than two-thirds" of Acorn's £3.3 million loss in 1987. It having been noted that Acorn would "probably throw the computer away and use the case for something else", Acorn did indeed appear to employ a very similar case for the Master Compact, incorporating

2838-637: The Company attempted to merge with British Aerospace and, in July 1984, it bought the micro-chip manufacturer, INMOS . In April 1986, Thorn EMI sold its film and video operations to businessman Alan Bond . Thorn EMI acquired the Mullard Equipment Limited ('MEL') division of Philips in 1990. Further divestment of operations took place during the 1990s. In 1991, its consulting, systems integration, and outsourcing service division – Thorn EMI Software ,

2924-525: The Gary and Gayle custom chips, as their code names may suggest. In an attempt to reduce the costs and increase the accessibility of gate array design and production, Ferranti introduced in 1982 a computer-aided design tool for their uncommitted logic array (ULA) product called ULA Designer. Although costing £46,500 to acquire, this tool promised to deliver reduced costs of around £5,000 per design plus manufacturing costs of £1-2 per chip in high volumes, in contrast to

3010-546: The Thorn EMI board, with Read becoming deputy chairman of Thorn EMI. Thorn's chairman Sir Richard Cave became chairman of the merged group. Soon after the merger, Thorn EMI divested many of the group's leisure operations. In July 1980, seven hotels, including the Tower Hotel, London and Royal Horseguards Hotel , and 12 Angus Steakhouse restaurants were sold for £23 million to Scottish & Newcastle Breweries . In November

3096-471: The UK pioneered commercializing bipolar ULA technology, offering circuits of "100 to 10,000 gates and above" by 1983. The company's early lead in semi-custom chips, with the initial application of a ULA integrated circuit involving a camera from Rollei in 1972, expanding to "practically all European camera manufacturers" as users of the technology, led to the company's dominance in this particular market throughout

3182-545: The UK, although, in later years, these models were made outside the UK by Thomson. By 1992, the Ferguson TV factory in Gosport had closed, ending a long period of manufacturing of Ferguson TVs in the UK. VCRs were sourced until the early 1990s by a joint company called J2T, established by JVC , Thorn (Ferguson), and Telefunken . From around 1991, VCRs were sourced from Thomson alone. One important aspect of Thorn EMI's business

3268-411: The base layers. Using decals of logic gate connections and PC tape to interconnect these gates, custom circuits could be quickly laid out by hand for these relatively small circuits, and photo-reduced using existing technologies. After a falling out with IMI, Robert Lipp went on to start California Devices, Inc. (CDI) in 1978 with two silent partners, Bernie Aronson, and Brian Tighe. CDI quickly developed

3354-646: The bells made during the EMI era being based on the Friedland Master Bell (Big Bell for 8" models). This division, based in Marlow, provided hotels with televisions and related equipment. It also embarked upon a project called Hotel 3000, which provided interactive set-top boxes for hotel rooms in the late 1980s. After Thorn's demerger, this division started operating as Quadriga This small subsidiary further developed existing products, as well as introducing new ones. It

3440-739: The briefcase". Acorn records suggest that the memory cards employed the Astron format, apparently being evaluated by Acorn who had acquired one of the "100-or-so" development systems for the technology. The system documentation confirms this hardware configuration. The hardware specifications of the Communicator, observed from manufactured units, include the G65SC816 CPU, ULA, 512 KB of dynamic RAM, 32 KB of static RAM , 6522 VIA , AM2910PC modem, SCN2641CC1N24 UART , and SAA5240 teletext decoder and display generator, (with 2 KB of static RAM presumably employed for page storage). The components chosen and

3526-492: The capabilities provided are broadly similar to the BT Merlin M2105 variant of the Acorn Electron , with an upgraded CPU, the addition of teletext circuitry, the provision for Econet, and the omission of speech synthesis hardware apparently refining the Communicator as a product offering in the same general category. The Centre for Computing History notes that an example of the machine in their possession does not contain

Acorn Communicator - Misplaced Pages Continue

3612-522: The company was eventually called HBO Video in 1987. Many of EMI's leisure interest were sold the year after the merger but EMI Social Centres chain of bingo halls remained with Thorn EMI. In 1983, the Winter Gardens in Blackpool were sold to First Leisure . Gate array A gate array is an approach to the design and manufacture of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) using

3698-407: The decline of the home computer market and the financial crisis that led to Acorn's rescue by Olivetti , the Communicator had its origins in a concept mentioned publicly by co-founder Chris Curry as early as April 1984, envisioning a communications terminal aimed at business users offering a single-device solution for online information access in an elegant package with a small footprint. Acting as

3784-562: The designer can fairly easily count how many gates and I/Os pins are needed, the number of routing tracks needed may vary considerably even among designs with the same amount of logic. (For example, a crossbar switch requires much more routing than a systolic array with the same gate count.) Since unused routing tracks increase the cost (and decrease the performance) of the part without providing any benefit, gate array manufacturers try to provide just enough tracks so that most designs that will fit in terms of gates and I/O pins can be routed. This

3870-429: The door to the broad commercialization of gate arrays. The first CMOS gate arrays were developed by Robert Lipp in 1974 for International Microcircuits, Inc. (IMI) a Sunnyvale photo-mask shop started by Frank Deverse, Jim Tuttle and Charlie Allen, ex-IBM employees. This first product line employed 7.5 micron single-level metal CMOS technology and ranged from 50 to 400 gates . Computer-aided design (CAD) technology at

3956-465: The early 1980s, gate arrays were starting to move out of their niche applications to the general market. Several factors in technology and markets were converging. Size and performance were increasing; automation was maturing; the technology became "hot" when in 1981 IBM introduced its new flagship 3081 mainframe with CPU comprising gate arrays. They were used in a consumer product, the ZX81, and new entrants to

4042-455: The early 1990s, were seriously disrupting the gate array market. Designers still wished for a way to create their own complex chips without the expense of full-custom design, and eventually, this wish was granted with the arrival of not only the FPGA, but complex programmable logic device (CPLD), metal configurable standard cells (MCSC), and structured ASICs. Whereas a gate array required a back-end semiconductor wafer foundry to deposit and etch

4128-583: The early to mid-1980s, Thorn EMI Video Programmes released a number of games for several home computer formats, initially under their own name. They received a lukewarm reception with no major hits (though Snooker and Billiards did reach No. 6 in the UK Atari Charts). These included Computer War , Tank Commander , Snooker and Billiards , 8-Ball and Tournament Pool , Darts , Cribbage and Dominoes (1981), Gold Rush , Mutant Herd , Road Racer , Volcanic Planet (1983), and River Rescue (1982). The label

4214-419: The electronics and rentals divisions were divested as Thorn plc . Thorn EMI's wide range of business covered the following principal areas of activity; retail/rentals, electronics, defence, software, music, television broadcasting, lighting and film and cinema. Thorn Television Rentals (TTR) comprised two companies on merger, Radio Rentals and DER (Domestic Electric Rentals Ltd). The EMI group also included

4300-515: The expansion bus. The modem, asynchronous serial port, Econet port, printer port, and expansion bus connector are noted, along with an IIC bus providing access to a real-time clock and the DTMF dialler. Support was present to access dynamic and non-volatile RAM using a RAM filing system, and the Spectar II variant of the machine supported a memory card filing system allowing "the use of up to eight ASTRON Data Cards at one time". The development system for

4386-539: The expansion connector on the right-hand side of the unit, and even retaining the casing features for the Communicator's optional handset. Although considered to be either a potential successor to the Model B in the BBC Micro range or to be presaging the arrival of a 16-bit BBC "Model C", the Communicator's heritage draws much from the Electron and its BT Merlin M2105 derivative, giving some substance to contemporary speculation about

SECTION 50

#1732852418903

4472-471: The extensibility of the product through the development of additional software appealed to customers such as Pickfords. Although not openly priced, rumoured pricing of a Communicator was around £1000 in late 1985 for the basic model, remaining at a similar price level in early 1987 with colour monitor included. Launched as part of Acorn's range of new products (alongside the Acorn Cambridge Workstation ) targeting "new and more specialised market areas" following

4558-448: The first-level metal interconnect. This increased chip densities by 40%, significantly reducing manufacturing costs. Early gate arrays were low-performance and relatively large and expensive compared to state-of-the-art n-MOS technology then being used for custom chips. CMOS technology was being driven by very low-power applications such as watch chips and battery-operated portable instrumentation, not performance. They were also well under

4644-474: The forthcoming Single European Act . Gaining critical mass in lighting fixtures – defined as 10% market share in any one county – was identified as a priority. In 1988 Thorn EMI bought the French group Holophane to gain access to its luminaire subsidiary, Europhane. In November 1990, Thorn EMI announced that it had agreed to sell its principal light source interests to GE Lighting . Under the agreement, GE acquired

4730-530: The industry. Gate array master slices with unfinished chips arrayed across a wafer are usually prefabricated and stockpiled in large quantities regardless of customer orders. The design and fabrication according to the individual customer specifications can be finished in a shorter time than standard cell or full custom design. The gate array approach reduces the non-recurring engineering mask costs as fewer custom masks need to be produced. In addition, manufacturing test tooling lead time and costs are reduced —

4816-516: The interconnections, the FPGA and CPLD had user-programmable interconnections. Today's approach is to make the prototypes by FPGAs, as the risk is low and the functionality can be verified quickly. For smaller devices, production costs are sufficiently low. But for large FPGAs, production is very expensive, power-hungry, and in many cases, do not reach the required speed. To address these issues, several ASIC companies like BaySand, Faraday, Gigoptics, and others offer FPGA to ASIC conversion services. While

4902-768: The lamp plants at Enfield, Leicester and Wimbledon, as well as Thorn's 51% in SIVI Illuminazione in Italy and 100% holding in Gluhlampenfabrik Jahn. Thorn EMI subsequently closed its Merthyr Tydfil lamp factory, consolidated its UK distribution centres and sold its South African business. In 1994, following a leveraged management buy-out , Thorn Lighting Ltd floated on the London Stock Exchange as TLG plc (the Thorn Lighting Group). From its formation until

4988-531: The machine or a follow-on product suggested as being the online submission of news stories by journalists and other newspaper contributors. Thorn EMI#Business Communications Thorn EMI was a major British company involved in consumer electronics, music, defence and retail. Created in October 1979, when Thorn Electrical Industries merged with EMI , it was listed on the London Stock Exchange and

5074-484: The market boomed, profits for the industry were lacking. Semiconductors underwent a series of rolling recessions during the 1980s that created a boom-bust cycle. The 1980 and 1981–1982 general recessions were followed by high-interest rates that curbed capital spending. This reduction played havoc on the semiconductor business, which at the time was highly dependent on capital spending. Manufacturers desperate to keep their fab plants full and afford constant modernization in

5160-399: The market increased visibility and credibility. In 1981, Wilfred Corrigan , Bill O'Meara, Rob Walker, and Mitchell "Mick" Bohn founded LSI Logic . Their initial intention was to commercialize emitter coupled logic gate arrays, but discovered the market was quickly moving towards CMOS. Instead, they licensed CDI's silicon gate CMOS line as a second source. This product established them in

5246-400: The market while they developed their own proprietary 5-micron 2-layer metal line. This latter product line was the first commercial gate array product amenable to full automation. LSI developed a suite of proprietary development tools that allowed users to design their own chip from their own facility by remote login to LSI Logic's system. Sinclair Research ported an enhanced ZX80 design to

SECTION 60

#1732852418903

5332-463: The means by which Communicator machines, fitted with a standard Econet module, would access files and print documents. The Acorn Filestore product had essentially this specification and capabilities, and documentation was made available describing its use with the Communicator. Distinct versions of the FileStore E01 base unit and E20 hard disk unit were made for use with the Communicator, these having

5418-623: The mid-1990s, Thorn EMI was one of the United Kingdom's largest defence companies. The MEL Division, acquired from Philips , was involved in radar, electronic warfare, and communications. The MEL communications business was sold to Thomson-CSF , now Thales . In 1995, the various defence businesses were sold: In the early 1980s, Thorn EMI Machine Tools manufactured Computerised Numerical Controlled (CNC) machine tools at its EMI-MEC Limited factory in Chandlers Ford, Eastleigh, Hampshire. In

5504-429: The performance of the existing dominant logic technology, transistor–transistor logic . However, there were many niche applications where they were invaluable, particularly in low power, size reduction, portable and aerospace applications as well as time-to-market sensitive products. Even these small arrays could replace a board full of transistor–transistor logic gates if performance were not an issue. A common application

5590-504: The product mix. In 1992, Thorn converted some of the remaining Rumbelows shops into DER, Multibroadcast or Radio Rentals branches. Some stores were also converted to the Fona brand. By the 1990s, Rumbelows was making losses and Thorn closed the remaining 285 Rumbelows shops and 36 Fona stores in 1995. In 1995 Thorn EMI bought Dillons the Bookstore from Pentos and immediately closed 40 of

5676-537: The same test fixtures can be used for all gate array products manufactured on the same die size. Gate arrays were the predecessor of the more complex structured ASIC ; unlike gate arrays, structured ASICs tend to include predefined or configurable memories and/or analog blocks. An application circuit must be built on a gate array that has enough gates, wiring, and I/O pins. Since requirements vary, gate arrays usually come in families, with larger members having more of all resources, but correspondingly more expensive. While

5762-641: The same year, most of the group's other leisure interests including Blackpool Tower , amusement parks, sport centres, piers , restaurants, pubs, four theatres, including the Prince Edward Theatre , and the Empire Ballroom and Cinema in Leicester Square in London were sold to Trust House Forte for £16 million. Lord Delfont became chairman and chief executive of THF's leisure division. In May 1984,

5848-495: The solution, starting with a "logic plan", proceeding through the layout of the logic in the gate array itself, and concluding with the definition of a test specification for verification of the logic and for establishing an automated testing regime. Verification of completed designs was performed by "external specialists" after the transfer of the design to a "CAD center" in Manchester, England or Sunnyvale, California, potentially over

5934-564: The standard until then. This later innovation paved the way to full automation when coupled with the development of 2-layer CMOS arrays. Customizing these first parts was somewhat tedious and error-prone due to the lack of good software tools. IMI tapped into PC board development techniques to minimize manual customization effort. Chips at the time were designed by hand, drawing all components and interconnecting on precision gridded Mylar sheets, using colored pencils to delineate each processing layer. Rubylith sheets were then cut and peeled to create

6020-702: The telephone network. Prototyping completed designs took an estimated 3 to 4 weeks. The minicomputer itself was also adaptable to run as a laboratory or office system where appropriate. Ferranti followed up on the ULA Designer with the Silicon Design System product based on the VAX-11/730 with 1 MB of RAM, 120 MB Winchester disk, and utilising a high-resolution display driven by a graphics unit with 500 KB of its own memory for "high speed windowing, painting, and editing capabilities". The software itself

6106-448: The time was very rudimentary due to the low processing power available, so the design of these first products was only partially automated. This product pioneered several features that went on to become standard in future designs. The most important were: the strict organization of n-channel and p-channel transistors in 2-3 row pairs across the chip; and running all interconnect on grids rather than minimum custom spacing, which had been

6192-401: The £15,000 design costs incurred by engaging Ferranti's services for the design process. Based on a PDP-11/23 minicomputer running RSX/11M, together with graphical display, keyboard, "digitalizing board", control desk and optional plotter, the solution aimed to satisfy the design needs of gate arrays from 100 to 10,000 gates, with the design being undertaken entirely by the organisation acquiring

6278-421: Was a subject of a management buyout . In 1993, Thames Television was sold. In 1994, following a leveraged management buy-out , Thorn Lighting Ltd floated on the London Stock Exchange as TLG plc (the Thorn Lighting Group) and in 1995, the various defence businesses were sold. On 16 August, 1996, Thorn EMI shareholders voted in favour of demerging Thorn from EMI again: the Company became EMI Group plc , and

6364-509: Was absorbed into ADT , soon after the EMI demerger, and; all but a handful of the famous red 'Thorn' bellboxes were replaced, mostly by ADT's hexagonal bellboxes, which were inherited by ADT's prior takeover of Modern Alarms. However, the fire products are still present in many premises, and until recently spares and complete systems of Thorn heritage continued to be manufactured by ADT. Most of Thorn's bells and sounders were rebadged Friedland, Fulleon Cooper, or Hosiden Besson products, with most of

6450-686: Was available separately for organisations already likely to be using VAX-11/780 systems to provide a multi-user environment, but the "standalone system" package of hardware and software was intended to provide a more affordable solution with a "faster response" during the design process. The suite of tools involved in the use of the product included logic entry and test schedule definition (using Ferranti's own description languages), logic simulation, layout definition and checking, and mask generation for prototype gate arrays. The system also sought to support completely auto-routed designs, utilising architectural features of Ferranti's auto-routable (AR) arrays to deliver

6536-535: Was based in St. Lawrence House, Broad Street, Bristol. Ferguson Radio Corporation was owned by Thorn EMI. It made consumer electronics , such as TV sets and radios . TVs were designed and manufactured by Ferguson in the UK until around the early 1990s, although, before this, some Thomson-designed models were introduced to the Ferguson range of TVs for sale in the UK. Some of these Thomson-based models were even manufactured in

6622-465: Was based in the Thorn EMI head office, Orion House on Upper St Martin's Lane, near Seven Dials in central London. They moved from there to an office in Soho , and the name changed to just Thorn EMI Video. TEV later became Creative Sparks . Thorn Security installed and serviced all types of electronic security systems from their bases around the UK, inheriting EMI's well-known AFA-Minerva lineage. The business

6708-484: Was combining a number of smaller circuits that were supporting a larger LSI circuit on a board was affectionately known as "garbage collection". And the low cost of development and custom tooling made the technology available to the most modest budgets. Early gate arrays played a large part in the CB craze in the 1970s as well as a vehicle for the introduction of other later mass-produced products such as modems and cell phones. By

6794-402: Was directed to find existing Acorn-developed components that would fit in the physical unit to deliver "a smaller, neater, faster, sweeter machine". From August 1984, four engineers and a sales and marketing employee worked from Acorn's original premises to reconcile the functionality requirements of the product with the physical constraints imposed by the product design, eventually requesting only

6880-438: Was its ability to manufacture one of its Ferguson televisions, and then make it available for rental through its rentals sector, or sell it through its retail sector. Prism Micro Products was owned by Thorn EMI for a short period in the 1980s. The group was in partnership with Ericsson in the UK telecommunications company Thorn Ericsson but sold its 51% stake to Ericsson in 1988. Kenwood Limited sold small appliances and

6966-451: Was later acquired by Cypress Semiconductor in 2001; CDI closed its doors in 1989; and LSI Logic abandoned the market in favor of standard products and was eventually acquired by Broadcom. A gate array is a prefabricated silicon chip with most transistors having no predetermined function. These transistors can be connected by metal layers to form standard NAND or NOR logic gates . These logic gates can then be further interconnected into

7052-452: Was later renamed to Creative Sparks . In 1991, its consulting, systems integration, and outsourcing service division – Thorn EMI Software , was a subject of a management buyout and started to trade as a separate company named "Data Sciences Ltd". The staff and management paid £82 million for the £117 million turnover division. In 1996, IBM acquired Data Sciences plc for £95 million. From 1981 until about 1983, Thorn EMI Video Programmes

7138-545: Was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index . It demerged back to separate companies in 1996. The company was formed following the board of EMI accepting a £169 million offer from Thorn Electrical Industries in November 1979 to merge the groups. Thorn saw EMI as a good fit for the future home video market with Thorn manufacturing hardware and EMI providing software. EMI chief executive Bernard Delfont , chairman Sir John Read and Capitol Records ' chief Bhaskar Menon joined

7224-577: Was sold to fellow shareholder, Virgin Group , for £600,000. Thames Television was acquired by Pearson Television in mid-1993. In 1987 the purchase of the Jarnkonst group of Nordic light fitting companies by Thorn Lighting and closure of the Buckie lamp factory signalled a new drive by parent Thorn EMI to trade an export and 'colonies' mentality for a multi-cultural, international outlook, one that took account of

7310-436: Was supported using an additional expansion board. RGB and composite video outputs were provided as standard interfaces. A 25-character by 8-line LCD display (256 x 64 pixels) is described as an option and is depicted in the C series brochure, with a monochrome monitor also offered as an option. One version of the Communicator was initially indicated to provide a teletext adapter "enabling it to receive Ceefax and Oracle", and

7396-746: Was the majority shareholder in the London-based ITV broadcaster Thames Television until a share flotation in 1984. In 1984, Thorn EMI and others launched Music Box , Premiere and The Children's Channel via satellite television . In 1985, the company attempted to sell their stake in Thames to Carlton Communications but this was blocked by the governing body of ITV, the Independent Broadcasting Authority . In February 1986, Thorn EMI's 50% stake in Music Box owner, The Music Channel,

#902097