Robert Dennard, Inventor of DRAM, Dies At 91

necro81 writes: Robert Dennard was working at IBM in the 1960s when he invented a way to store one bit using a single transistor and capacitor. The technology became dynamic random access memory (DRAM), which when implemented using the emerging technology of silicon integrated circuits, helped catapult computing by leaps and bounds. The first commercial DRAM chips in the late 1960s held just 1024 bits; today's DDR5 modules hold hundreds of billions. Dr. Robert H. Dennard passed away last month at age 91. (alternate link) In the 1970s he helped guide technology roadmaps for the ever-shrinking feature size of lithography, enabling the early years of Moore's Law. He wrote a seminal paper in 1974 relating feature size and power consumption that is now referred to as Dennard Scaling. His technological contributions earned him numerous awards, and accolades from the National Academy of Engineering, IEEE, and the National Inventor's Hall of Fame.

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