Sponsor: San Diego Section
Speaker: Dr. Tom Lee; Dr. Chris Mangelsdorf

Meeting Date: 23 Jun 2023
Time: 01:00 PM to 03:00 PM
Cost:
Location: 10155 Pacific Heights Blvd, San Diego, CA 92121
Reservations: IEEE
Summary:
Talk 1:

The discovery, then invention, of the transistor sits almost exactly midway between Ferdinand Braun’s discovery of solid-state rectification in 1874 and the modern era of gigascale ICs. As with other epochshattering inventions, the story of the transistor isn’t quite as neatly linear as some recountings might suggest. Very few newly-minted EEs have ever heard of a point-contact transistor, and even those few are unlikely to know that these devices often exhibited a negative current gain (beta). This talk will answer questions such as, “What was an alloy-junction transistor? What were surface-barrier transistors? What was the hometaxial process? What happened to germanium devices? How can you build a singletransistor, non-switching voltage inverter?” Retracing some of the steps of the pioneers generates important insights into the nature of innovation, as well as a much deeper appreciation of the role of chance. As the end of lithographic scaling seemingly positions us on the threshold of a major technological discontinuity, it is perhaps helpful to study the story of the previous one.

Talk 2:

This is really a love story. Not about antique technology, but about a wild period of jaw-dropping creativity that was the golden era of the bipolar transistor. The almost magical properties of the BJT and the diverse set of problems it was called on to solve are nothing short of astonishing: a DAC that automatically corrects for transistor sizing, an LDO loop invariant to PVT, a multiplier made from one transistor, and an equation for synthesizing…well, almost anything. No, this is not just nostalgia. It is a lesson in creative thinking. It is a blueprint for the next golden era of circuit magic.

Bio: Dr. Tom Lee; Dr. Chris Mangelsdorf