From laptops to GPS trackers, Robert Dennard’s invention is everywhere these days.
While working at IBM in 1968 the electrical engineer invented dynamic random access memory, a better, simpler, way for computers to store the ever-growing flow of 1s and 0s that have gradually led to a global digital revolution. Dennard is one of three accomplished awardees who came to San Diego this week to participate in the 13th annual Kyoto Prize Symposium. The event brings last year’s Kyoto winners to local universities where each gives a talk about their career and major contributions to their field.
This year Dennard, who won in the advanced technology category, delivered his speech at San Diego State University’s Montezuma Hall. He was followed by evolutionary biologist Masatoshi Nei who won in the basic sciences category and took the stage Tuesday afternoon at UC San Diego. A third winner in the arts and philosophy category, jazz musician and poet Cecil Taylor, is scheduled to deliver a presentation in the University of San Diego’s Shiley Theatre Wednesday at 10:30 a.m.
Created in 1984 by philanthropist and entrepreneur Kazuo Inamori, founder of Kyocera Corporation, the prize recognizes the creativity of “dedicated but unsung” researchers and pioneers “who have made extraordinary contributions to science, civilization and spirituality.”
Nei is recognized for his theory of genetic distance, a way of comparing genes to determine when different species split off from a common genetic ancestor. Nei used this distance technique to discover evidence that humanity as we know it today originated on the African continent about 115,000 years ago.
Taylor is known for his pioneering work in free jazz an improvisational style that uses percussive piano keystrokes and less rigid chord structures and rhythms to take popular music in new directions.
Dennard is credited with bringing simplicity to computer memory. His elegant design allows to computers to store a single bit of information, an individual one or zero, with only a single transistor, compared to a total of six used
to store the that same bit by the state-of-the-art machines in use when he entered the field in the early 1960s.
This technique allowed much more information to be stored in a given physical space and at a much lower cost. Dennard also proposed computer design guidelines known as “scaling theory” that showed that transistors could be made ever smaller by shrinking their individual components, and the amount of voltage they use, by consistent amounts. That observation has been key in the massive increases in computer memory density that have delivered today’s modern systems, some of which are small enough to fit inside a smartphone.
Born in 1932 on a Texas farm, and schooled in one-room school houses in childhood, Dennard said he believes his creativity, and ability to focus, came, in part from his simple upbringing. He said his idea for a simpler way of storing information came “in a moment” after watching a presentation from a competing research team in his field.
He said he is not sure why some are able to refine a creative solution and others aren’t.
“A great many have the intelligence, many have the preparation, some are at the right place at the right time and only a few realized they have the vision and ability to make amazing things in the world,” he said.
In the end, he said he believes seeing creative solutions in the world comes down to one’s attitude.
“Attitude is everything,” he said.