IBM Eagle

IBM Eagle

We were notified about the existence of this eagle by John Deters, who loaned us a copy of the chip for digital imaging through the microscope. The artwork was placed on a very early version of a 1 Mb memory chip made by IBM in the mid-1980s. Because the integrated circuit used older 256 Kb technology, it was larger and slower than later 1 Mb chip designs. However, the chip was a significant cost improvement over existing 256 Kb chips of the period and enabled IBM to compete more effectively with Japanese 64 Kb chips that were selling at 1/20th the cost. Featured on the chip is the image of a bald eagle (designed by engineer Scott Lewis), which overlaps into a cache region of the chip. Also present, on the left-hand side of the image, are the letters IBM and the designation "Eagle", which is probably the code-name for this random access memory integrated circuit.


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