Robert Dennard, the inventor of modern DRAM memory, passed away on April 23, 2024, at the age of 91.
Born on September 5, 1932, in Terrell, Texas, Dennard earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1958 and joined IBM as a researcher.
During the 1960s, as demand for computer memory was increasing, the popular magnetic core memory was reaching its limits in density, cost, and performance.
Dennard was then working on metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) memory at IBM, but this approach had issues with being too slow and consuming too much chip area.
By chance, Dennard had an idea: data could be stored using the positive and negative charges of a capacitor within a single transistor, with data dynamically refreshed by repetitive recharging. This concept became the basis for DRAM memory.
Dennard and IBM were awarded the patent for DRAM in 1968, and when the technology became commercially available in 1970, its low cost, low power consumption, and simple structure quickly made magnetic core memory obsolete, propelling rapid progress in information and telecommunication technology.
DRAM memory, together with the first batch of low-cost microprocessors, accelerated the miniaturization of computers, enabling the commercial success of early personal computers like the Apple II, and opening the door for today’s mobile devices.
Dennard also proposed the famous Dennard scaling law, which states that with process improvements, the power density of semiconductor chips remains constant. This rule dominated the semiconductor industry for over 30 years and is considered one of the industry’s three major laws, alongside Moore’s Law and Amdahl’s Law.
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