Four-Phase Systems AL1 Processor – 8-bits by Lee Boysel

Four-Phase Systems AL-4 – 1000+ gates 8-bits

In today’s tech economy there are companies that serve as incubators for startups, such institutions as Y-Combinator and Techstars entire purpose is to help develop emergent tech companies.  In the 1960’s there was also tech incubators, perhaps the best known is Fairchild.  The difference is that Fairchild was not designed to be an incubator, nor were they trying to be.  The bureaucracy of such a large corporation allowed many engineers in somewhat marginal positions to work extensiely on projects of their own. Projects that perhaps were not directly beneficial to Fairchild, but close enough related to slip under managements noses.  Many of the ‘great’ semiconductor companies were started by former Fairchild employees, Robert Noyce, co-founder of Intel, being perhaps the most famous.

Lee Boysel started work at Fairchild in 1966 after working at several other companies semiconductor departments.  Boysel had one main focus, MOS.  MOS (Metal-Oxide-Semiconductors) were very new in the 1960’s and their potential was not well understood.  Most IC’s were designed using Bipolar technology but Boysel saw the potential of MOS and worked at Fairchild to perfect its processes.  He designed a 256-bit RAM in MOS< as well as an 8-bit full adder, as well as the first MOS IC with over 100 gates.  None of these designs were of great commercial success, but that was Fairchild’s problem, not Boysel’s. Boysel was building the foundations for his greater plans, plans that would be realized only after leaving Fairchild.

Boysel left Fairchild in 1968, to build a new company known as Four-Phase Systems.  Four-Phase was named after the 4-phase clocking system used in the MOS logic Boysel had designed.  Boysel’s goal was to build a single chip computer using MOS and use it to power systems to rival the likes of Data General and IBM.  Initial funding of $2 million was provided, somewhat ironically, by Corning Glass works, who also owned a large portion of Signetics.  Initial production of Boysel’s designs was by yet another Fairchild incubated startup known as Cartesian inc.  Cartesian was offered foundry services that duplicated Fairchild;s MOS process.  This saved Four-Phase from having to build there designs for a completely new process.

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