Sharp Corporation Calculator Integrated Circuits

Hayakawa san founded in 1912 a metal workshop and one of his inventions was the Ever-Ready Sharp mechanical pencil in 1915, that eventually gave Sharp Corporation its name.

In 1964 Sharp developed with the CS-10A the World's first transistor calculator and two years later, Sharp introduced the CS-31A, a very innovative calculator using Integrated Circuits (ICs) and priced at ¥350,000 (about US$1000). With the famous Micro Compet QT-8D, Sharp introduced in October 1969 the World's first battery operated electronic calculator, based on four LSI (Large Scale Integration) chips manufactured by the Autonetics division of Rockwell. This was the first pocketable calculator priced at less than JP¥100,000 (less than US$300) and turned out to be a popular product, paving the long-lasting success of Sharp in the calculator business.

American companies not only invented the transistors and ICs used with electronic calculators in the second half of the 1960s, it was with Texas Instruments another American company that demonstrated as a feasibility study with the Cal-Tech prototype using LSI chips in portable, battery operated calculators leading to the famous Canon Pocketronic.

While American companies like General Instruments, Rockwell and Texas Instruments had a lead in the development of LSI chips, were it Japanese companies like Canon, Casio, Sanyo, Sharp and Toshiba developing, manufacturing and successfully selling electronic desktop calculators. In the dawn of portable electronic calculators, the first products were introduced from from Japanese companies with chipsets manufactured by American companies in PMOS (p-channel Metal–oxide Semiconductor) technology:

With the goal of the major Japanese calculator manufacturers, to get independent from Western chip manufacturers, many local suppliers like Hitachi, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, NEC and Toshiba started the design of their own PMOS LSI devices for desktop calculators and it was no surprise that Sharp ventured into manufacturing of Integrated Circuits, too.

Sharp reused the Rockwell chipset developed for the QT-8D calculator with the ELSI-8 (EL-8), a compact, battery-operated calculator introduced in November 1970 and its offspring ELSI-8A. Driven by the success of these products, Sharp was able to license the underlying chip technology from Rockwell and used it with three generations of “Sharp-Rockwell” devices for Electronic Calculators.

First Sharp chipset under Rockwell license

The 1st Generation with four LSI Chips still used the “old-style” Rockwell device markings. The complexity of the chips approached 1,000 transistors, commonly known as the threshold for LSI (Large Scale Integration) ICs.
These chips are manufactured in a 10 um PMOS metal-gate process with enhancement mode transistors used for both gates and loads and using Ceramic Quad In-line Packages (QIP) with 42 pins.

Second Sharp chipset under Rockwell license

The 2^nd Generation introduced early in 1972 combined the same functionality into just two LSI Chips, using the newly defined Rockwell device markings.
These chips are manufactured in a 10 um PMOS metal-gate process with enhancement mode transistors used for both gates and loads and using Ceramic Quad In-line Packages (QIP) with 42 pins.

First Sharp chipset under Hitachi license

With the goal of the major Japanese calculator manufacturers, to get independent from Western chip suppliers, Sharp turned in 1971 with the chipset for their 12-digit desktop calculators CS-122 and CS-223 to Hitachi. The outcome was a modular design that used the Hitachi HD3215, HD3216 und HD3217 chips for the base model CS-122, while the HD3218 chip was added for the CS-223 featuring an additional memory function.
Starting in February 1972, Sharp manufactured these LSI chips with their own PMOS technology, too and marked them SD3215, SD3216, SD3127 and SD3218, respectively
This chip is manufactured in a 10 um PMOS metal-gate process with enhancement mode transistors used for both gates and loads and using Ceramic Dual In-line Packages (DIP) with 16 or 24 pins.

First Sharp single-chip calculator circuit under Rockwell license

The 3^rd and last Generation of “Sharp-Rockwell” devices introduced end of 1973 used just one LSI Chip for a 12-digit Desktop Calculator with memory function.
This chip is manufactured in a 10 um PMOS metal-gate process with enhancement mode transistors used for both gates and loads and using Ceramic Quad In-line Packages (QIP) with 42 pins.

Sharp LI2000 Series calculator circuits

The first commercially know single-chip calculator circuit completely developed and manufactured by Sharp was the LI2002, to our knowledge used by a handful of OEM manufacturers but not making its way into Sharp’s own calculator line. The LI2002 was not exactly successful, some OEM manufacturers redesigned their calculators within a few months to adopt similar offerings from Hitachi or NEC – don’t miss the Accumatic 30 calculator introduced in 1974 and going through four different calculator chips within a year. The next product, named LI2003, was more successful, we know it not only from the Sharp EL-8114 handheld calculator, but located it as of today in more than ten OEM products.

As of today, we discovered only around 15 PMOS LSI chips (LI2XXX) manufactured by Sharp between 1974 and 1981, and most of their own calculator designs used brains from Hitachi and NEC, instead. The next generation of calculator chips designed for LCD calculators in CMOS (Complementary Metal-oxide Semiconductor) technology (LI3XXX Series) were far more successful and made their way in hundreds of products between 1976 and the 1990s.

Work-In-Progress.

If you have additions to the above article please email: joerg@datamath.org.

© Joerg Woerner, November 20, 2024. No reprints without written permission.