14 Mar
2015
14 Mar
'15
1:23 p.m.
On Sat, Mar 14, 2015 at 11:30 AM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
ISTR that TI took over the line years back and
re-christened it as SBP...
parts. Of course, my memory could be playing tricks with me.
TI cloned some of the other vendor's popular programmable devices, but
they didn't take over anyone else's line in that time frame.
One of the most notable cases was TI offering equivalents to MMI PALs,
which may have briefly had part numbers in TI's existing SBP (Schottky
Bipolar PROM) family, but mostly were seen with the TIBPAL prefix. TI
may or may not have had an agreement with MMI, but TI apparently had
their own silicon designs, because the device programming specs were
NOT compatible with MMI's, even though the non-programming
functionality was identical.
TI's bipolar PROMs originally had 74 series part numbers (e.g.,
74S471), but they decided to make them a separate "SBP" family. That
happened at roughly but not exactly the same time that TI switched the
bipolar programmable devices from NiCr fuses to TiW for higher
reliability (less fuse regrowth). IIRC, the new part numbers were
SBP1nnn for NiCr and SPB2nnn for TiW. The later TI bipolar
programmable devices such as PALs used the TiW fuse technology from
the outset.