I
t used to be you only had to reinvent the wheel to get a little attention. By 1987, you had to reinvent the computer chip - to change designs that some Rockwell International officials said were virtually set in stone. And to risk $10,000 and three months turn-around time on each chip designed for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Working on the $800,000 NASA project were seven students and a team of university professors. Their task? To produce five tiny errordetecting computer chips to replace more than 2,000 others.
When complete, the chips would be used to beam error-free messages from earth-orbiting satellites to tracking stations on the ground. And, according to Professor Gary Maid, transmissions would be more accurate and five
times faster than "regular" chips. To produce the new chips, students worked round-the-clock in a basement lab of the Janssen. Engineering Building. Amid bare walls, dim lighting, old water pipes and electrical wires, they used more than $1.2 million worth of computer equipment to get results. According to Maki, his team was venturing into new frontiers. Student designers like Carrie Claflin found that doing the "impossible" meant that they, too, had to keep accuracy rates high. According to Claflin, she sometimes lost sleep over the project. "There are so many things that could go
wrong," she said. "If anything does, months of work and $10,000 may go down the drain." Although student foulups were rare, Claflin speculated on the consequences. "The guilt trip would be amazing," she said. "It would make Mom look like an amateur." Although designs were double-checked, the actual fabrication of the fingertip-sized chips was an imperfect science. "Out of every 50 chips, we usually get about 40 good chips," said John Shovic, electrical engineering professor. But even an 80 percent success rate was above average for silicon chips, be said.
Students worked sld&-by-slde with faculty members to Insure the success of the project. Their work produced chips that processed information five times faster than conventional methods, and which could correct up to 16 errors per 255 pieces of Information transmitted. (Hayes)
Wtr&-wrapped chips had to be checked Individually for produc路 tion flaws. Graduate student Car路 rle Claflin hooks one up to a Hewlett-Packard computer to veri路 fy that every part of It has been properly produced. (Hayes)
About 20 percent of the computer chips tested by Peter Feel路 lng were defective. Those that tested positive were shipped off to NASA laboratories, where they would be used as prototypes for satellite computer chips. (Hayes)
Computer Chips
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