A news brief announcing Sanyo Electronics' request to the Japanese Government's MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry) to approve a licensing agreement that it had reached with US IC manufacturer General Instrument(GI) for GI to manufacture and supply Sanyo with a Large Scale Integration (LSI) chip-set for use in an upcoming Sanyo miniature electronic calculator.

The story also reports that Sanyo is investing over $4-million in a new IC manufacturing facility to eventually allow them to manufacture the chips themselves under the technology licensing agreement with GI.

The four-chip set was jointly developed by Sanyo and General Instrument, and once MITI approval was gained, the chip-set was first used in Sanyo's ICC-0081 "Mini Calculator", one of the earliest portable, rechargeable battery-powered electronic calculators.