Next up in our series of Rochester Electronics’ favorite 1970s semiconductors, is the 1103 commercial DRAM. Among the wide variety of semiconductor memory devices, the introduction of the DRAM (dynamic random-access memory) had a particular impact on the history of electronic systems and products. The patent for the first one-cell DRAM was granted to Doctor Robert H. Dennard and IBM in 1968, with the commercialization of the DRAM concept quickly following.

In 1969, Honeywell drew up the three-transistor dynamic memory cell concept to store data and sought partners to commercialize and build the design in volume.

After initially struggling to attain acceptable yields through their p-MOS technology, a crucial additional design change (buried contacts) dramatically improved yields and enabled an even smaller transistor structure. Performance was enhanced to 32 read cycles every two milliseconds. A series of silicon design iterations improved production yields and Intel would eventually launch the 1103 DRAM (1kb – 1024bytes) in 1970.

Until this point, magnetic-core memory had been the industry standard. Hugely intensive in terms of material and assembly time, and physically large, magnetic core memory was quickly replaced by the cheaper DRAM. By 1972, the 1103 DRAM was the best-selling semiconductor in the world. The design was cross-licensed to several other semiconductor manufacturers, making it one of the first of the memory device “standards” available.

Intel withdrew from the DRAM market in 1985, and supply became dominated by Japan, and then by Korean suppliers like Hynix and Samsung. Today, DRAM’s ubiquitous application across markets means that supply and pricing are driven like a commodity, rather than the traditional buyer-seller paradigm.

We hope you enjoyed this latest installment of our series.

Stay tuned for more in the coming months!

Rochester Electronics has been in the business of supporting the semiconductor memory market for over 40 years. We continue to support a wide variety of DRAM devices from multiple manufacturers.

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Rochester’s Memory portfolio includes over 135 million units comprising 10,000 product numbers, covering Volatile and Non-Volatile varieties from multiple suppliers, in industry-standard packages.

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Citation: Bellis, Mary. "Who Invented the Intel 1103 DRAM Chip?" ThoughtCo, Aug. 27, 2020, thoughtco.com/who-invented-the-intel-1103-dram-chip-4078677.

1103 DRAM image ©Thomas Nguyen - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49532861