FPGA history (was Re: VHDL PDP11)

Signetics started using the term Field Programmable Gate Array in 1977 or 1978 to describe their 82S102 (open collector) and 82S103 (tri-state) bipolar devices. They had 16 inputs and 9 outputs with a programmable AND array. The name was mostly a marketing ploy because they were small devices similar to MMI's PALs. Gate Arrays were the popular large scale mask programmable logic device at the time. Signetics introduced the 82S100/82S101, the Field Programmable Logic Array, in 1975. The term FPGA became popular with larger devices such as the Xilinx LCA (1985) and the Actel ACT devices (1988). Both of these had many small logic elements as opposed to the wide AND gates of the early Altera devices. You also designed these devices by creating a schematic using a standard macro cell library, just like a real Gate Array. Actel even mimicked the LSI Logic Gate Array library. In a few years, hardware description languages started making inroads into FPGA designs. I worked at Data I/O from 1981 to 1997 developing commercial software for designing with programmable logic. The PLD language, ABEL, was one of projects I worked on. Michael Holley