My First Chip- The TAL002 Gate Array
In 1979 I went to work for Texas Instruments in Houston Texas. I had been hired by Texas Instruments in the UK to work with the Houston folks to be a technical resource for the gate array program in Europe. At this time gate arrays were a very new technology.

In Houston there was some engineers who didn't believe in the official company gate array. They built the TAL004 gate array but it had no official support.

When I got back to the UK I supported their position. Fortunately, Rob Willmot (who ran the UK operation) suggested the idea of building a commercial product based on the technology.

TAL002 Gate Array Photo
 

He set up a small team under Mike Hill based in Bedford UK and I got to take a key role in defining the devices and the associated development environment. It felt like a fantastic opportunity for a new graduate like me.

It is difficult to imagine today, but back in 1979 the connectivity of most chips (and all gate arrays) was done manually with large plots and colored pencils.

The software technology to do good auto layout was not really ready at the time so I proposed a pragmatic combination of the newly available LVS and pre layed out MSI level cells to reduce the complexity of manual layout.

Rather than just have an upgraded TAL004 as a product I proposed adding a 200 gate version to make the product more of a family. Hence the TAL002 was my first chip. We used it as a test vehicle for the design flow and library.

 
A zoom in on the TAL gate level structures...