Daniel Nenni has just posted a very brief history of the SoC, with heavy emphasis on SoCs for mobile products. The emphasis is probably warranted because mobile designs really have driven SoC design for the past decade. One of the best things about this short history, in my opinion, is the set of links to SemiWiki descriptions of mobile SoCs including:
- Apple A5X
- NVIDIA Tegra 3
- TI OMAP4
- QCOM Snapdragon S4
- Samsung Exynos
Click here to see Nenni’s SoC post.