Robert H. Dennard, the engineer who invented the silicon memory technology that plays an essential role in every smartphone, laptop, and tablet computer, died on April 23 in Sleepy Hollow, New York. He was 91 years old.
At the hospital, his daughter Holly Dennard said the cause of death was a bacterial infection.
Dennard's pioneering work began at IBM in the 1960s. At the time, computersThe equipment for holding and storing data was expensive, huge, often room-sized machines, and slow. He was researching the emerging field of microelectronics, which uses silicon-based transistors to store digital bits of information.
In 1966, Dennard invented a way to store one digital bit in one transistor. This technology, called dynamic random access memory (DRAM), stores information as a charge that slowly dissipates over time and must be refreshed periodically.
His discoveries opened the door to previously unimaginable increases in data capacity through lower costs and higher speeds using tiny silicon chips.
Since then, DRAM has been the basis for steady advances over the decades. High-speed, high-capacity memory chips hold data and quickly transfer it to a computer's microprocessor, which converts the data into text, audio, and images. Streaming videos on YouTube, playing music on Spotify and Apple Music, and using AI chatbots like ChatGPT rely on them.
“DRAM made much of modern computing possible,” said John Hennessy, chairman of Alphabet, Google's parent company.
Dennard also developed a concept that serves as a roadmap for future advances in microelectronics. Debuting in his first paper in 1972 and further fleshed out two years later, he was able to shrink transistors to make them more powerful and more powerful, while the energy consumed by each transistor remained approximately constant. We explained the physics that make it possible to make it low cost.
This principle, known as Dennard scaling, complemented a prediction made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, who later co-founded Intel. Moore argued that the number of transistors that can be packed onto a silicon chip could double approximately every two years, a trajectory that would accelerate computing power and speed. His prediction became known as Moore's Law.
While Moore's Law was about the density of transistors on a chip, Dennard scaling was primarily about power consumption, which reached its limit by 2005. Transistors became so small that electrons began to leak, causing the chips to heat up and consume more energy.
But Dennard's approach to identifying technology challenges had a lasting impact on chip development, researchers say.
“Everyone in the semiconductor industry studied his principles to get to where they are today,” said Dennard, CEO of leading chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices and a former colleague of Dennard's at IBM. said Lisa Su.
Robert Dennard was born on September 5, 1932 in Terrell, Texas, the youngest of four children. His father, Buford Dennard, was a dairy farmer, and his mother, Loma Dennard, was a housewife and also worked in the school cafeteria.
When Robert was young, the family moved east and began his education in a one-room schoolhouse near Carthage, Texas. The family later moved to Irving, then a small town, when his father took a job at a fertilizer company there.
Growing up, Robert developed an interest in art by reading the stories of H.G. Wells and the poetry of Ogden Nash, which his eldest sister Evangeline left behind when she left Texas to become an Army nurse during World War II. I deepened my understanding. In an oral history interview he gave at the Computer History Museum in 2009, he recalled listening to Sigmund's Romberg Operetta album many times. “She left me with something very good to start some kind of intellectual career,” he said of her sister.
In high school, he was particularly good at math and English, and was planning to attend a nearby junior college. However, his aptitude for music opened up another path. He played his E-flat bass in his high school band, and when Southern Methodist University's band director visited, he offered Robert a scholarship.
“That was my opportunity,” Dennard recalls.
Music was his introduction, but he went on to earn bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering. He later received his Ph.D. He graduated from Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University).
In 1958, Mr. Dennard was hired by IBM and spent his entire career there until retiring in 2014.
He was married three times. He and his second wife, Mary Dolores (Makiewicz) Dennard, divorced in 1984, and he married Frances Jane Bridges in 1995.
In addition to his daughter and wife, Mr. Dennard is survived by another daughter, Amy Dennard, and four grandchildren. His son, Robert H. Dennard Jr., died in 1998.
Dennard has earned 75 patents during his career and has several scientific credits, including the National Medal of Technology from President Ronald Reagan in 1988 and the Kyoto Prize for Advanced Technology from Japan's Inamori Foundation in 2019. I won an award.
Asked in a 2009 interview what advice he would give to young people interested in science and technology, Dennard cited his “very humble upbringing” and said, “Anyone can be a part of this.” Stated.
“There's an opportunity there,” he said. “These things don't happen on their own. It takes real people to make these breakthroughs.”