The Santa Clara Valley Section will host an IEEE Milestone dedication on Monday, August 20 at the Computer History Museum (CHM) in Mountain View. The Milestone is titled “The Floating Gate EEPROM, 1976-1978” .
Technology developed by Eli Harari in the late 1970s laid the groundwork for the subsequent development of NAND Flash. Eli co-founded SanDisk in 1988 with the vision that flash memory could emulate disk storage, and that its portability as a semiconductor medium and its low power could create a revolution in the electronics industry.
Eli’s journey, and this vision, are encompassed by this citation on the IEEE Milestone plaque:
“From 1976-1978, at Hughes Microelectronics in Newport Beach, California, the practicality, reliability, manufacturability and endurance of the Floating Gate EEPROM — an electrically erasable device using a thin gate oxide and Fowler-Nordheim tunneling for writing and erasing — was proven. As a significant foundation of data storage in flash memory, this fostered new classes of portable computing and communication devices which allow ubiquitous personal access to data.”
Speakers in this plenary session will include SanDisk co-founder Eli Harari and IEEE President Gordon Day. In addition, a special video, funded in part by local IEEE sections and chapters, will be shown which describes the IEEE Milestone program as well as this EEPROM/Flash Memory Milestone.
For details see the event announcement on the CHM website: http://www.computerhistory.org/events/#data-storage-flash-memory-revolution
