Archimedes' Lever wrote:
On Wed, 16 Jun 2010 18:45:35 -0500, flipper wrote:

The original IC had only one transistor, three resistors and one
capacitor.


Wrong. That was NOT an IC. That was a hybrid ASSEMBLY. You need to
learn the difference.

It took literally decades before we could reliably put caps onto and
into chips, and we still prefer to place them externally, and we still do
not use them for memory. That should tell you something.
SORRY!
Capacitors are a PART of the memory in DRAM; the FETS are *designed*
to have sufficient gate capacitance to hold the (data) charge for a
rather long time.
In the 80's (i think) Intel had a PMOS 128-bit (count may be high)
"array" that took 3 voltages to run to spec; the capacitance was high
enough and the leakage low enough that stored data could last for DAYS
with no power.
And built-in capacitors as a part of the design were used in analog
and digital parts made at Fairchild back in those daze as well.