| Amdahl 470A LSI IC | |
| Written by AnubisTTP on 2017-03-09 |
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The Amdahl 470A is an unusual LSI CPU component chip that was used in Amdahl's 5860 "supercomputer" mainframe. Amdahl was known for making air-cooled computers in a market dominated by water cooling, which resulted in their chips having a very unique construction. This chip is no exception, the top is dominated by a tall heatsink that would have poked into a forced air cooling channel when installed in a computer. During use, many such chips would be bonded into large arrays to construct a complete CPU. Note that this chip has a Fujitsu makers mark... Fujitsu was Amdahl's largest shareholder and eventually grew to own the company outright.
Amdahl's CPUs were so unique in appearance that many factory defects found their way into Lucite promotional paperweights that were produced by the company as sales samples and awards. This is the predominant form in which they are seen nowadays, as Amdahal's various air cooled chips never saw wide use outside the company.
Amdahl 470 integrated circuit.
Amdahl 470 die photo, at 20x magnification.
Amdahl 470 IC, underside. During installation, Amdahl would use laser bonding to solder the innumerable fine flatpack leads on the bottom of each chip.
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