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TAP TIMES -6- NOVEMBER 2022

Memory (from 4) Like so many technology inventions of the
day, the MOSFET was developed at Bell
After it emerged from legal protection, the Labs in New Jersey by Mohamed Atalla
company’s market had changed direction, and Dawon Kahng in 1959. Then, in 1964,
and Wang Labs was unable to move into John Schmidt at Fairchild Semiconductor
new fields successfully. The company has developed MOS memory.
since been sold several times.

Semiconductor memory
The computing industry bid farewell to
clunky, outsized core memory in the early
1960s with the introduction of bipolar
memory by Texas Instruments.

This memory, noted Wikipedia, was made
from bipolar transistors. It was first em-
ployed by the U.S. Air Force in 1961. That
year, the application of solid-state memory
on an IC was proposed by Bob Norman at
Fairchild Semiconductor in Mountain View,
Calif.
Bell Labs was an incubator for genius. In 1956, Walter Brattain
(at microscope), John Bardeen and William Shockley (at right)
Bipolar memory, however, did not replace won the Nobel Prize for Physics for their invention of the transis-
core memory because it was too large and tor. Shockley later gained as much fame and notoriety for his
work in electronics as he did for his theories of race. (Bell Labs)
too expensive.

Rocky Road
Finally, the semiconductor memory that Semiconductor memory, particularly DRAM
did replace core became possible with the (dynamic read-only memory) has had a
introduction of the MOSFET (metal-oxide- somewhat rocky road in its journey to be-
semiconductor field effect transistor). coming the King of Memory, particulary on
the business side.

In 1982, the biggest player in the semicon-
ductor memory market was Japan. At the
time, DRAM consisted of relatively tiny, bit-
wise, memory. If your memory chips were
64K, they were at the leading edge.

Compare that bit-size memory to today,
where most computers are furnished with
at least 8GB of DRAM. In 1980, chips that
large were barely discussed even by indus-
Fairchild Semiconductor is often credited with developing the first
practical MOS memory. In 1957 Fairchild’s founders sat for a try futurists. There were many Japanese
group photo. The late Dr. Robert Noyce is in the center, while Dr. competitors, including Fujitsu, Hitachi,
Gordon Moore, now 93, is at left. Noyce and Moore later exited
Fairchild to found Intel. (Fairchild) to page 8