This was a big deal in my memory, and is rarely mentioned in the modern tech news. So this article caught my eye.

Wafer Scale was super ambitious, and in ways paved the road to modern system on chip.

I would liken this to how Jorodowsky's Dune paved the way for star wars and other well known scifi, but is itself relatively obscure:

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/How-much-does-Lucas-owe-to...

Two totally different topics with the common theme of an obscure predecessor setting the stage for subsequent large scale development.