If you say you're buying a new computer, one of the first questions you're likely to ask is: How much memory does it pack? And by memory, we're talking DRAM, or dynamic random access memory.
DRAM is the memory that gets loaded with information and programs every time you turn on your computer or laptop.
These days, DRAM is usually measured in gigabytes, the more the better to render fast-paced action games and stream high-definition video from the Web.
About $25 billion worth of DRAM is sold around the world each year, making its way into the electronics that populate our homes, schools and offices.
Chances are shoppers buying memory for their new PCs have never heard of Robert Dennard. But the IBM Fellow and Croton-on-Hudson resident will be getting thanks from his peers in the engineering community as he accepts the 2009 IEEE Medal of Honor at a ceremony in Los Angeles today.
Awarded since 1917, the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers medal has been given to such luminaries as Edwin Armstrong, inventor of FM radio, and Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby, inventors of the microchip.
Today's award is far from the first for the 76-year-old Dennard, who went to Washington, D.C., in 1988 to receive the National Medal of Technology from President Ronald Reagan. He was also inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1997. This year, he received the Charles Stark Draper Prize from the National Academy of Engineering, which came with a $500,000 award.
While today DRAM is taken for granted, Dennard can still remember his "aha" moment when he figured out a way to create a memory cell using just one transistor instead of six. He had been working on the idea at home and couldn't wait to share the news.
"I was very excited. I called up my boss and said, 'I've found a great new way to do memory.' He said, 'Come on in tomorrow and we'll talk about it.' Like he was saying, 'Don't call me at this time of night.' It was the first and only time I called him like that," Dennard recalled. "It was really dramatic for me."
The 1967 invention was patented in 1968 and began to appear in products in the 1970s. Cheaper, faster and less power hungry than the earlier magnetic memory, DRAM became the standard.
Even today, no one has come up with a better idea, though research is ongoing on using more "flash" memory like that in digital cameras inside PCs.
David A. Hodges, a professor emeritus at University of California at Berkeley and chairman of the IEEE awards board, said Dennard's achievements are on par with the invention of the vacuum tube and the transistor.
"Bob's pioneering work on the one-transistor memory cell is embedded in virtually every electronic device we use today," Hodges said. "This by itself may have had greater impact than anything else other than the transistor in the electronics world."
Dennard traces his inventive mind to his youth in a one-room schoolhouse in East Texas where he would spend summer days looking up at clouds and daydreaming.
Dennard came to IBM Corp. in 1958, fresh from a Ph.D. degree from Carnegie Institute of Technology.
Today, Dennard is still tackling new challenges in computer chip design, including the problem of energy efficiency in giant supercomputers.
A holder of 52 U.S. patents, Dennard is humble about his achievements. While he doesn't still carry around the slide rule that got him through engineering school, his personal computer is 7 years old and has just a half a gigabyte of DRAM.
"I barely turn on my cell phone," said Dennard, who spends his free time with the Westchester Scottish Country Dance Society and the Taghkanic Chorale.
The 1967 invention was patented in 1968 and began to appear in products in the 1970s. Cheaper, faster and less power hungry than the earlier magnetic memory, DRAM became the standard.
Even today, no one has come up with a better idea, though research is ongoing on using more "flash" memory like that in digital cameras inside PCs.
David A. Hodges, a professor emeritus at University of California at Berkeley and chairman of the IEEE awards board, said Dennard's achievements are on par with the invention of the vacuum tube and the transistor.
"Bob's pioneering work on the one-transistor memory cell is embedded in virtually every electronic device we use today," Hodges said. "This by itself may have had greater impact than anything else other than the transistor in the electronics world."
Dennard traces his inventive mind to his youth in a one-room schoolhouse in East Texas where he would spend summer days looking up at clouds and daydreaming.
Dennard came to IBM Corp. in 1958, fresh from a Ph.D. degree from Carnegie Institute of Technology.
Today, Dennard is still tackling new challenges in computer chip design, including the problem of energy efficiency in giant supercomputers.
A holder of 52 U.S. patents, Dennard is humble about his achievements. While he doesn't still carry around the slide rule that got him through engineering school, his personal computer is 7 years old and has just a half a gigabyte of DRAM.
"I barely turn on my cell phone," said Dennard, who spends his free time with the Westchester Scottish Country Dance Society and the Taghkanic Chorale.
