Death of Inventor Recalls Birth Of Microelectronics

The death at age 81 of Jack Kilby closes the books on a late-1950s race between two legendary giants to develop the technology which forms the foundations of today's electronics and IT industries.

Prodded by early computer builders looking to pack ever-greater numbers of transistors on circuit boards, Kilby, working for Texas Instruments, came up with the novel concept of placing multiple transistors, resistors, and capacitors together on a single piece of silicon traditionally used to hold only one element.

"The idea occurred to Kilby at the height of summer, when everyone else was on vacation and he had the lab to himself," according to T.R. Reid's 2001 history, "The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution."

Unbeknownst to Kilby, Robert Noyce was working on the same problem at Fairchild Semiconductor Corp., a company he had co-founded in the then-nascent Silicon Valley. (Noyce would later go on to co-found Intel Corp.)

In 1959, the two filed separate patent applications, Kilby on Feb. 6 and Noyce on July 30.

"Most of the work Kilby did formed the foundation of the whole industry today; it's like [the work of] Einstein or Newton," said Kevin Krewell, editor in chief of the Microprocessor Report. "There was of course Noyce's parallel development, so it was two brilliant minds, working on two parallel paths, with similar solutions."

Where did the name integrated circuit come from? A hint comes from Kilby's patent application, entitled "Miniaturized Electronic Circuits." "It should be noted that all components of the circuit are integrated into the body of the semiconductor material," Kilby wrote in the description of his invention. Kilby was granted U.S. patent number 3,138,743 on June 23, 1964.

Philosophically, the separate patent applications from Kilby and Noyce don't differ all that greatly in approach.

"In contrast to the approaches to miniaturization that have been made in the past, the present invention has resulted from a new and totally different concept for miniaturization," Kilby wrote in his patent application.

"Miniaturization can best be attained by use of as few materials as possiblethe ultimate in circuit miniaturization is attained using only one material for all circuit elements and a limited number of compatible process steps for production thereof."

Noyce, in his application entitled "Semiconductor device-and-lead structure" indicated that his intention was "to make unitary circuit structures more compact and more easily fabricated in small sizes than has heretofore been feasible, and to facilitate the inclusion of numerous semiconductor devices within a single body of material." Noyce was awarded patent number 2,981,877 on April 25, 1961. Noyce, who went on to become president and chairman of Intel, died of a heart attack in 1990 at the age of 62.

Fairchild and Texas Instruments eventually cross-licensed their patents, enabling industry development to move forward.

While today's billion-transistor microprocessors indicate the era of Kilby and Noyce is long gone, current technology poses problems of its own. "There are technical challenges, but I believe we are up to them," said Rich Belgard, a computer consultant and patent expert in Saratoga, Calif. "Clearly, power management is very critical. Cost is another issue. [Microprocessor] masks cost millions and millions of dollars, so mistakes are prohibitively expensive."

One solution Belgard sees is a trend toward reconfigurable computing, which relies on a single chip that's reprogrammable on the fly to take on different characteristics. That negates the need for numerous new, expensive chip designs.

Still, the integrated circuit isn't the final word on innovation. "I absolutely believe there's much more to be found out and developed in semiconductor technology," said Krewell. "What we consider exotic today--things like spintronics or carbon nanotubes--may create another future for the business."