A Brief History of AT&T's First Digital Signal Processor: Technology Challenges in Its Development

In the early 1970s, Bell Labs was preparing the foundation for revolutionizing the Bell System network. For nearly 100 years, the telephone system relied on transmitting and switching analog signals. With the advent of large-scale integrated (LSI) circuit technology, the future was an all-digital network. The pace of development was picking up, and flexibility and time to market were increasingly important.