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Before integrated circuits, other firmware devices included a
discrete semiconductor diode matrix. The Apollo guidance computer
had firmware consisting of a specially manufactured core memory
plane, called "core rope memory", where data was stored by
physically threading wires through (1) or around (0) the core storing
each data bit.
Ascher Opler coined the term "firmware" in a 1967. Originally,
it meant the contents of a writable control store (a small specialized
high speed memory), containing microcode that defined and
implemented the computer's instruction set, and that could be
reloaded to specialize or modify the instructions that the central
processing unit (CPU) could execute. As originally used, firmware
contrasted with hardware (the CPU itself) and software (normal
instructions executing on a CPU). It was not composed of CPU
machine instructions, but of lower-level microcode involved in the
implementation of machine instructions. It existed on the boundary
between hardware and software; thus the name "firmware".
Still later, popular usage extended the word "firmware" to
denote anything ROM-resident, including processor machine-
instructions for BIOS, bootstrap loaders, or specialized applications.
Until the mid-1990s, updating firmware typically involved
replacing a storage medium containing firmware, usually a socketed
ROM. Flash memory allows firmware to be updated without
physically removing an integrated circuit from the system. An error
during the upgrade process may make the device non-functional, or
"bricked".

Task 3. Do you remember the English equivalents of the
following words and word combinations?
Економічний строк експлуатації, постійна пам'ять, виправляти
помилки, пам'ять з груповим перезаписом, дискретна
напівпровідникова діодна матриця, феритова матриця пам’яті,
створювати, записувана пам'ять блоку управління, на межі,
розширювати, резидентна частина, завантажувач операційної

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