As a memory chip company, we used IC packages with
few (16-18) leads, but with a lot of transistors in the chip:
this represented a high gate-to-pin ratio. (It’s noteworthy
that if you double the number of bits within a shift
register memory chip, its package leads are unaffected. If
you double the number of bits in a RAM memory chip,
you only need to add one more address pin.) So, memory
chips efficiently manage the number of pins on the
package. Saving pins lowered our costs and improved our
profits.