Unsung hero
Benjamin Fulford,
Forbes 06.24.02
Fujio Masuoka says that Toshiba tried to demote him after he invented a $76 billion product. The loss was America's gain. Will Japan make the same mistake with the next innovation?Fujio Masuoka invented flash memory, a technology used in semiconductors with sales of $76 billion in 2001. These chips went into products worth more than $3 trillion, including automobiles, computers and mobile phones. Flash memory was the most important semiconductor innovation of the 1990s, and it should have made Masuoka very rich. But the 59-year-old inventor lives in Japan. His employer, Toshiba, recognized his efforts by awarding him a bonus worth a "few hundred dollars"--and promptly let its archrival Intel take control of the market for his invention. Subsequently, Masuoka says, Toshiba tried repeatedly to move him from his senior post to a position where he could do no further research. Toshiba is embarrassed by all this. Its public relations department repeatedly told FORBES GLOBAL that Intel invented flash memory. But Intel says that it was Toshiba, and in 1997 the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers in New York gave Masuoka its Morris N. Liebman Memorial Award in recognition of his invention of flash memory while he worked at Toshiba. When reminded of this, Toshiba admits that it did, in fact, invent flash memory but failed to capitalize on its initial lead. Masuoka, now a professor at Tohoku University at Sendai in northern Japan, expects to have the last laugh. Since quitting Toshiba in 1994, he has been working on what he expects will be an even more important invention: a "three-dimensional silicon-based semiconductor," he says, which will increase the capacity of semiconductors by a factor of ten. If his invention works as he says it will, Intel could make a 20-gigahertz Pentium chip with the equipment it now uses to make a 2-gigahertz chip. The same would go for other semiconductors, such as DRAMs. It would also delay by 30 years, until 2040, the date when silicon semiconductors reach their theoretical limit. The cost per bit would be a tenth of current costs, he says. This time Masuoka is applying in the U.S. for patents in his own name. He is seeking venture-capital funding so that he can reap the rewards of his creativity in a manner more in tune with Silicon Valley than Japan. Masuoka's tale illustrates how Japan lost the semiconductor race with the U.S. in part by neglecting basic research in favor of applied work on established products. He is not the only talented Japanese to become frustrated by the lack of recognition. Shuji Nakamura invented a semiconductor-powered light bulb; in 2001 he sued his employer, Nichia, over ownership of the patents. He now works in the U.S. Masuoka, a shy but confident-looking man, seemed destined for great things. Four months after he joined Toshiba in 1971, Masuoka, who had just received a doctorate from Tohoku University, invented a type of memory known as SAMOS. After five years at Toshiba, he invented another type and was moved to the semiconductor production division, where he developed a 1-megabit DRAM. What fired him up, though, was an idea that came to him--yes--in a flash. One of the biggest challenges facing the semiconductor industry in the 1970s was to find a way to retain memory so that it did not vanish every time the power was turned off. Engineers found it too cumbersome to build a nonvolatile memory for each bit of information. Masuoka's insight was that information needed to be stored in big batches rather than in single bits. It was easier to engineer the retention of big batches because this could be done with simpler, more compact circuit designs. Without permission from Toshiba, Masuoka began spending his nights and weekends working on this idea. By 1980 he had applied for the basic patents on a type of flash memory now known as NOR-type (not/or) flash memory. It was not until four years later, after a promotion, that he was able to produce the first flash memory. "I was now senior enough that I could go to the factory without permission and order them to make me one," he said. (His promotion resulted from innovations he made in working on incremental improvements in DRAM technology.)
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http://www.forbes.com/global/2002/0624/030.htmlThanks to Enrique G. Paredes for his nonprofit contribution to this post on Japan´s R&D!