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Behind-the-Scenes Microchip Pioneer Steps Forward with His Greatest Innovation
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Behind-the-Scenes Microchip Pioneer Steps Forward with His Greatest Innovation
Most of the microchip industry's visionary talents are behind-the-scenes innovators whose complex circuit designs can best be measured by their practical impact on our everyday lives.
Anyone using an electronic watch, hand-held calculator, pocket paging device, electronic camera or heart pacemaker is benefiting from John H. Hall's pioneering work in low power CMOS integrated circuit technology. Hall's developments have advanced the state of electronics for the medical, military, telecommunications and other industries, and for many millions of consumers.
Now John Hall is introducing his latest integrated circuit technology, one that is likely to surpass his significant prior accomplishments. It is a synergistic group of IC innovations forming a circuit design package that can allow the American electronics industry to leapfrog years ahead of the competition. It is called Tungsten Gate Merged BiCMOS.
While conventional wisdom says the next generation microchip will come from shrinking it's feature size to a halt-micron or less, requiring hugely expensive new fabrication facilities, John Hall has devised a better way. His Tungsten Gate Merged BiCMOS quartet of chip innovations produces a faster, smaller, lower power chip with more circuit features, but at a tiny fraction of the cost by using standard 2 micron design rules and existing-low cost-2 micron fabrication facilities.
Like many of Hall's prior innovations, which are now accepted standards, it transcends prevailing semiconductor industry consensus. However, John Hall's career as a true innovator is full of stories of how his unorthodox approaches ultimately became industry benchmarks.
- A Personal History of Successfully Bucking The Consensus
A math and science genius, John Hall studied electronics in the Navy and went on to graduate from the University of Cincinnati in 1961.
His career heated up quickly at his first job with Rockwell on the then-highly classified Minuteman Missile project. This upstart engineer ultimately saved the Minuteman program by solving a circuit problem that caused the missile to explode while flying through clouds.
The leaders at Honeywell recognized his talent and hired Hall to design custom circuits for the advanced YF-11 Blackbird Reconnaissance Plane. Here Hall developed the first on-board aircraft computer made entirely of integrated circuits. This multi-function custom circuit approach transcended the industry's state-of-the-art, which then were mainly transistors, diodes and simple function ICs.
In 1962 John Hall met semiconductor pioneer Jean Hoerni, a founder of Fairchild and inventor of the planar process, the basis of today's microchip technology. Hoerni asked John to develop ICs at Union Carbide. This was Hall's first job in the Santa Clara valley, well before it was known as "Silicon Valley."
He served as Union Carbide's Director of IC Development (1962-1967), and his years there were marked with innovations that were to chart the course of the industry. These include the first application of thin film technology to on-chip resistors, the first dual transistor on a single chip and the invention of the first dielectric isolation technology.
He co-founded Intersil with Hoemi in 1968, heading their research and development. His breakthrough in coating silicon oxide gates with phosphorous glass resulted in the first practical metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) processes.
His Intersil team also developed the first N Channel memory chip, at a time when most companies overlooked its potential. Companies like Intel later established their growth in N Channel memory, now an industry standard.
When new investors bought Intersil, Hall left the company to pursue a technology he'd been developing for a new product idea: an electronic watch.
- The Low Voltage CMOS Breakthrough: The World's First Electronic Watch
In an era when most watches were mechanical wind-up or self-winding models, John knew his proposed low-voltage CMOS technology could produce a chip that would run an electronic watch requiring only a tiny 1 volt battery.
He first approached American watch companies which scoffed at the idea. He later opened up discussions with Swiss and Japanese firms. Hall remembers one Swiss watchmaker who laughed at him saying, "The Japanese will never become a player in the timepiece industry."
Ultimately the Japanese did accept John's theory, over a bid from competing RCA, to develop a 1 volt CMOS process for electronic watches. He went to Japan to help Seiko build the country's first CMOS fabrication facility (1970). This resulted in the world's first electronic watch, which became wildly successful and an important building block for today's electronics. Over 20 years later, Seiko is one of the world's largest CMOS chipmakers and Japan is the world leader in electronic timepieces.
Other Japanese companies quickly embraced low power CMOS applications, allowing them to surpass the United States in consumer electronics. Hall's chip technology became the forerunner of thousands of portable electronic products. It wasn't until the mid-1980s that U.S. companies like Intel and Texas Instruments introduced their first CMOS chips.
In return for his work in Japan, Seiko agreed to finance Hall's own semiconductor company in the U.S. This was the start of Micro Power Systems (1971) and an extraordinary string of electronic innovations.
- Hall's Custom Microchip Applications: History in The Making
For the next 15 years, Hall's patented microchip innovations led Micro Power Systems in the development of many electronic industry firsts. Hall's low power CMOS integrated circuit designs were consistently competing against, and winning, bids from much larger industry giants. These innovations included:
The world's first computerized programmable heart pacemaker
Hall's company competed with Motorola and Texas Instruments in a bid from Medtronics to create a computerized heart pacemaker. Hall's design allowed the pacemaker to operate for 10 years without a battery replacement and allowed doctors to change its settings via wireless remote control, rather than through invasive surgery.
The first electronic camera shutter
Hall first presented his chip for SLR cameras to leading German cameramaker Leitz, which rejected it. Ultimately Canon embraced the idea and was able to bring the first automatic exposure cameras to market.
The first low-cost ICs highly resistant to nuclear radiation
Hall's patented processes allowed on-board circuits to remain active despite potential radiation damage, which normally disrupts their functions. This is an important characteristic for high-end military aircraft.
Stationary (Phased Array) Radar Systems
A typical radar requires a moving dish to track its signal. Hall developed the subassembly for the B-1 Bomber's airborne radar system, allowing it to remain stationary while improving its accuracy and reliability.
Frequency Synthesizers
Hall developed the processes that are the basis of today's high performance synthesized tuning systems. This chip replaced the quartz crystals previously required for CB radios.
Handheld Digital Voltmeters
Hall's proprietary circuit designs transformed bulky voltmeters into slim handheld units, allowing Beckman to dominate their field.
Portable LCD Calculators
Hall designed the chip for Sharp's first portable liquid crystal display (LCD) calculator.
Cellular Telephones
He developed a molybdenum gate MOS process and built a chip production factory in Finland for Nokia, a cellular telephone leader.
Synthesized Voice Chip
In the early 1980's, Hall developed a 50 Mhz voice synthesizer chip for Matsushita designed for professional public announcement systems in Japan. It was the first high-quality voice synthesis chip that sounded like a real person, not a digitized robot.
Engineers at NTT, Japan's counterpart to AT&T, said it was the most complex CMOS chip they had ever seen. This chip was a forerunner of today's voice synthesis chips.
Other breakthroughs developed under Hall's leadership include the first one-chip analog-to-digital converters (developed for Analog Devices). These converters translate real world information into digital data and are now commonly used in computer automation and control, colorization of movies and in fax machines.
In almost every case, Hall was able to develop custom IC technologies and solve problems that stumped other industry engineers.
In 1986, after a highly publicized technology transfer dispute with Seiko's new management, still a key investor in his company at the time, Hall was forced to leave Micro Power Systems. He initiated a lawsuit against Seiko which was settled out of court in 1990.
Hall currently heads Linear Integrated Systems in Milpitas, California which specializes in precision bipolar linear and high-speed CMOS digital circuits.
Tungsten Gate Merged BiCMOS could have broad implications in the rapid, and low cost, development of next generation advanced electronic products.
Like previous chapters in John Hall's career, this new microchip innovation may run against the grain of industry thinking. But like the low power CMOS revolutions he created in electronic watches, cameras and many other custom applications, Hall may again be providing us with a glimpse of our technological future.
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