American electrical engineer (born 1932)
Robert Heath Dennard (born September 5, 1932) is an American electrical engineer and inventor.
Biography
Dennard was born in Terrell, Texas, U.S. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, in 1954 and 1956, respectively. He earned a Ph.D. from Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1958. His professional career was spent as a researcher for International Business Machines.
In 1966 he invented the one transistor memory cell consisting of a transistor and a capacitor for which a patent[1] was issued in 1968. It became the basis for today's dynamic random-access memory (DRAM). Dennard was also among the first to recognize the tremendous potential of downsizing MOSFETs. The scaling theory he and his colleagues formulated in 1974 postulated that MOSFETs continue to function as voltage-controlled switches while all key figures of merit such as layout density, operating speed, and energy efficiency improve – provided geometric dimensions, voltages, and doping concentrations are consistently scaled to maintain the same electric field. This property underlies the achievement of Moore's Law and the evolution of microelectronics over the last few decades.
In 1984, Dennard was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for pioneering work in FET technology, including invention of the one transistor dynamic RAM and contributions to scaling theory.
