Carriage House Plans: Superchips

Tuesday 1 January 2013

Superchips

In mid-1980s, a British company Anamartic, funded by Tandem Computers and Sir Clive Sinclair among others, announced plans to manufacture microchips ("superchips") based on Catt's technology. The approach was reported to be revolutionary at the time, with predictions that it would enable construction of powerful super-computers from cheap, mass produced components, and cheaper and faster replacements for magnetic disk memories.Anamartic introduced a solid-state memory, called the Wafer Stack, based on the technology in 1989 and the device won Electronic Product's ‘Product of the Year Award’. However the company could not ensure a large enough supply of silicon wafers, which were crucial for its chip manufacturing, and folded in 1992. In the following years, other companies including Memory Corporation and Syntaq tried to revive and further develop Catt's ideas on WSI.