[Obituary] DRAM inventor Robert Heath Dennard dies at age 91; he also invented the 'scaling law' that complements Moore's Law

Robert Heath Dennard, known as the inventor of volatile memory 'DRAM', passed away on April 23, 2024. He was 91 years old.

Robert Dennard, father of DRAM, is deceased — also known for his foundational Dennard scaling theory | Tom's Hardware
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/robert-dennard-father-of-dram-is-deceased-also-known-for-his-foundational-dennard-scaling-theory

Robert Dennard, IBM Inventor Whose Chip Changed Computing, Dies at 91 - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/technology/robert-dennard-dead.html

Robert Dennard | IBM
https://www.ibm.com/history/bob-dennard

Dennard earned his PhD in electro-optics from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1958 and joined IBM as a researcher. When he first joined IBM, Dennard was in charge of research into the design and circuit applications of metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) , rather than memory development.

In 1964, Dennard was assigned to the development department for 'high-speed, low-power memory.' Dennard's development team succeeded in developing a 'system that uses six MOSFETs to store one bit of data,' but the system was more complex to design and slower than Dennard's ideal. After that, Dennard came up with the idea of 'storing one bit of data with one transistor,' and invented DRAM in 1966. DRAM quickly spread to the market and is still an indispensable technology for PCs and smartphones today.

In 1974, Dennard also announced a law called the ' scaling law .' The scaling law states that 'if the dimensions of a MOSFET are reduced by a factor of k, the delay time is reduced by a factor of k and the power consumption is reduced by a factor of k squared.' In simple terms, this means that as transistors become smaller, the processing speed increases and the power consumption decreases. This scaling law is known as a theoretically supported law that complements Moore's Law, an empirical rule that states that 'the integration density of semiconductors doubles every two years.'

Dennard's work has been widely recognized and he has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Technology in 1988, the IEEE Medal of Honor in 2009, the Kyoto Prize in 2013, and the Robert N. Noyce Award in 2019.

In the following interview video released upon receiving the Kyoto Prize, he says some interesting things, such as 'It is impossible to learn highly sophisticated technology from printed matter alone,' 'I am not the type of person who is the first to adopt new technology,' and 'I don't have a smartphone or tablet, and I only use my cell phone to make calls.'

Message from the 29th Kyoto Prize Laureate (Dr. Robert Heath Dennard) - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNePKFEucps