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How DRAM changed the world

From an idea in 1966 to a patent in 1968, DRAM has had an outsized impact on the world with its dynamic random access memory technology enabling everything from mobile phones to automobiles. Cheers to 50+ years of innovation!

To develop the technology, Dennard led a research team at IBM that experimented with binary data on a capacitor as a positive or negative charge. Since capacitors leaked charge, Dennard invented a platform where everything was handled by a single transistor, drastically decreasing the size. In a recent IBM tribute to Dennard, they describe the shock waves from the discovery: “Over the next five-and-a-half decades DRAM would, generation by generation, evolve...Not only did DRAM memory sweep away the earlier magnetic technologies, it became the foundational technology for an industry that has reshaped human society — from the way we work, to the way we entertain ourselves and even to the way we fight wars.”

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