Federico Faggin

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Federico Faggin (born December 1, 1941 in Vicenza) is an Italian physicist/electrical engineer and naturalized U.S. citizen, principally responsible for the design of the first microprocessor and for leading the 4004 (MCS-4) project to its successful outcome and for promoting its marketing. He also designed/led the design and was the vital force during the first five years of Intel's microprocessor effort. He continued to play a pacesetting role as founder and CEO of Zilog, the first company solely dedicated to microprocessors, for the next five years.

Life

Born in Vicenza, Federico Faggin received a Laurea Degree in physics, summa cum laude, at the University of Padua. At age 19, after his graduation from technical high school A. Rossi (Vicenza), he took a job at Olivetti, in Italy, where he co-designed and led the implementation of a small computer. After obtaining his university degree he worked at SGS Fairchild in Italy, where he developed SGS's first MOS process technology and designed its first integrated circuits. In 1968 he moved to Palo Alto and worked at Fairchild Semiconductor, where he created the MOS Silicon Gate technology with self-aligned gate, the basis of all modern CMOS computer chips. At Fairchild he produced the world's first commercial integrated circuit using Silicon Gate Technology with self aligned MOS transistors: the Fairchild 3708.

In 1970 he joined Intel where Marcian (Ted) Hoff, with Stanley Mazor and Intel's customer Masatoshi Shima, had formulated a new architecture for a family of Busicom calculators in 1969. Federico Faggin was hired as project leader to implement such architecture, which had been idling for many months. Independently, and without any help from Hoff and Mazor, Faggin created a new methodology for random logic chip design using silicon gate technology, previously non existent, and several design innovations that made it possible to fit the microprocessor in one chip. He developed the chip and logic design together with the layout of all the chips of the 4004 family (MCS-4). He built the tester to prove that the 4004 could be used for applications different from calculators (Hoff and Mazor considered the 4004 good only for calculators), and successfully transferred the first microprocessor to production (1970-1971). During the project development he was assisted only by Masatoshi Shima, who had come from Japan to check on the progress and stayed-on to help, and a couple of technicians. Faggin also convinced Bob Noyce to negotiate the exclusivity clause, in order to open the marketing of the 4004 which originally was a custom design for Busicom.

The design methodology created by Faggin was utilized for the implementation of all Intel’s early microprocessors and later also for Zilog's Z80. The 8008 development was originally assigned to Hal Feeney in March 1970 but was suspended until the 4004 was completed. It was resumed in January 1971 and Hal Feeney did the detailed design under Faggin’s direction and following his new methodology. Faggin developed the architectures and led the development of the 8080 and the 4040 microprocessors. When Faggin left Intel at the end of 1974 to found Zilog with Ralph Ungermann, he was department manager for MOS Research and Development with almost 80 engineers reporting to him and more than a dozen of products under development.

Zilog was the first company entirely dedicated to microprocessors while Intel was principally dedicated to memories. At Zilog, Faggin conceived the architecture of the Z80 microprocessor and helped Shima, who had joined the new company, in its design. He was Zilog's President and CEO until the end of 1980. In 1982, he co-founded Cygnet Technologies, Inc., maker of the Cygnet CoSystem personal telecommunications device, and was President and CEO of the company until 1986. In 1986 he co-founded and was CEO of Synaptics a company which produces the most widely used touchpad in the industry. He is presently CEO of Foveon Inc., a company making image sensors with a novel technology.

Major accomplishments in chronological order

1. MOS Silicon Gate Technology (1968). This technology, created at the Palo Alto, CA, R&D Laboratories of Fairchild Semiconductor, was the world’s first practical method to manufacture MOS (metal oxide semiconductor) integrated circuits with self-aligned gates. This technology replaced the traditional aluminum gate of an MOS transistor with a gate made of doped polycrystalline silicon, drastically reducing the physical size and the parasitic capacitances of the transistors. The advantages of silicon gate technology over metal gate technology were substantial: 1. It allowed the integration of twice the number of transistors in the same chip area; 2. The circuits were 3 to 5 times faster, for the same power dissipation; 3. The circuits had 10 to 100 times less junction leakage current; 4. The technology had much higher reliability and; 5. It made possible the creation of new device types, such as non-volatile memory using floating-gate transistors, and CCD image sensors. It was the silicon gate technology that made possible the creation of semiconductor memories in 1969-1970 and the microprocessor in 1970-1971. F. Faggin was the project leader of the silicon gate technology and invented its unique process architecture. See also: a) Faggin, F., Klein, T., and Vadasz, L. (1968). Insulated Gate Field Effect Transistor Integrated Circuits With Silicon Gates. Paper presented by Faggin at the IEDM Conference, October 23, 1968; b) Faggin, F., Klein T. (1970). Silicon Gate Technology. Solid State Electronics, Vol. 13, pp. 1125-1144.

2. The world’s first self-aligned gate commercial integrated circuit (1968). This was the Fairchild 3708, an 8-bit analog multiplexer with decoding logic, using silicon gate technology. The 3708 had lower cost and much better speed and junction leakage characteristics (vital for an analog multiplexer), than the Fairchild 3705, the equivalent integrated circuit (using metal gate technology), that the 3708 replaced. The 3708 proved the commercial viability of the silicon gate technology. F. Faggin was also the designer of the 3708. See also: Faggin, F., Klein T. (1969). A Faster Generation Of MOS Devices With Low Threshold Is Riding The Crest Of The New Wave, Silicon-Gate IC’s. Electronics, September 29, 1969.

3. The world’s first microprocessor (1971). Made possible by the advanced capabilities of the silicon gate technology, the Intel 4004 was a 4-bit CPU (central processing unit) on a single chip. The 4004 was a member of a family of 4 chips designed specifically for Busicom, a Japanese calculator manufacturer. The other members of the family (constituting the MCS-4 family) were: the 4001, a 2k-bit metal-mask programmable ROM with programmable input-output lines; the 4002, a 320-bit dynamic RAM with a 4-bit output port; the 4003, a 10-bit serial input and serial/parallel output, static shift register to be used as I/O expander. F. Faggin was the project leader, the creator of the design methodology and the principal designer of the four chips. The new random logic design methodology with silicon gate technology devised by Faggin was used for all the early generations of microprocessors at Intel and Zilog. The MCS-4 system was described in the following original articles: a) Faggin F., Shima M., Hoff M. E. Jr., Feeney H., Mazor S. The MCS-4 – An LSI Microcomputer System, presented by Faggin at the IEEE 1972 Region Six Conference; b) Faggin F., and Hoff M. E. Jr. Standard Parts And Custom Design Merge In A Four-Chip Processor Kit. Electronics Magazine, April 24, 1972

4. The world’s first 8-bit microprocessor (1972). The Intel 8008 was the first single-chip 8-bit CPU and, like the 4004, was built with p-channel silicon gate technology. The architecture of the 8008 was created by CTC, Inc., with the purpose of powering the Datapoint 2200 intelligent terminal. F. Faggin was the project leader, H. Feeney did the detailed chip design. See also: Faggin, F. (1992). The Birth Of The Microprocessor. Byte, pp. 145-150, March, 1992.

5. The Intel 4040 microprocessor (1974). The 4040 was a much improved, software-compatible version of the 4004 CPU allowing it to interface directly with standard memories and I/O devices. F. Faggin architected the 4040 and supervised its design, done by Tom Innes.

6. The Intel 8080 microprocessor (1974). The 8080 was the first high-performance 8-bit microprocessor, using the faster n-channel silicon gate technology. The 8080 was conceived and architected by F. Faggin and designed by M. Shima under Faggin’s supervision. The 8080 was a major improvement over the 8008 architecture, yet it retained software compatibility with it. It was much faster and easier to interface to external memory and I/O devices than the 8008. The high performance and low cost of the 8080 allowed for the first time the use of microprocessors for many new applications, including the forerunners of the personal computer. See also: Faggin F., Shima, M., Mazor S., An N-Channel 8-bit Single-Chip Microprocessor. IEEE ISSCC, February 1974, pp 56–57.

7. The Zilog Z80 microprocessor (1976). The Z80-CPU was a major improvement over the 8080, yet it retained software compatibility with it. Much faster and with more than twice as many registers and instructions of the 8080, it was part of a family of components that included several intelligent peripherals (the Z80-PIO, a programmable parallel input-output controller; the Z80-CTC, a programmable counter-timer; the Z80-SIO, programmable serial communications interface controller, and the Z80-DMA, programmable direct memory access controller). This chip family allowed the design of powerful and low-cost microcomputers with performance similar to minicomputers. The Z80-CPU had a substantially better bus structure and interrupt structure than the 8080 and could interface directly with dynamic RAM, since it included an internal memory-refresh controller. The Z80 was used in many of the early personal computers. F. Faggin conceived and architected the Z80-CPU and its family of parts. He also co-designed the CPU, whose project leader was M. Shima. The Z80 is still in high-volume production in 2009. See also: Shima M., Faggin F., Ungermann, R. (1976). Z80: Chip Set Heralds Third Microprocessor Generation. Electronics, August 19, 1976.

8. The Zilog Z8 microcontroller (1978). The Z8 was one of the first single-chip computers in the market. It integrated an 8-bit CPU, RAM, ROM and I/O facilities, sufficient for many control applications. F. Faggin conceived the Z8 in 1974, soon after he founded Zilog. The Z8 was designed in 1976-78 and is still in high-volume production in 2009.

9. The Communication CoSystem (1984). The Cosystem was conceived by F. Faggin and designed and produced by Cygnet Technologies, Inc., the second startup company of Faggin. Attached to a personal computer and to a standard phone line, the CoSystem could automatically handle all the personal voice and data communications of the user, including electronic mail, data-base access, computer screen transfers during a voice communication, call record keeping, et cetera. The patent covering the CoSystem: Patent No. 4,524,244; Digital and Voice Telecommunication Apparatus, by Faggin Federico, et al., is highly cited in the personal communication field.

10. As cofounder, president and CEO of Synaptics, F. Faggin contributed also to the creation of the Synaptics I1000, the world’s first single-chip optical character recognizer (1991), and the Synaptics Touchpad (1994). F. Faggin is a co-inventor of 10 patents assigned to Synaptics.

11. During Faggin’s tenure, as president and CEO of Foveon, Faggin revitalized the company and provided a new technological and business direction resulting in image sensors superior in all critical parameters to the best sensors of the competition, while using approximately half the chip size of competing devices. Faggin also oversaw the successful acquisition of Foveon by the Japanese Sigma Corporation in November 2008.

Original articles on Silicon Gate Technology

F. Faggin, T. Klein: "Silicon-Gate Technology". "Solid State Electronics", 1970, Vo. 13, pp. 1125-1144

Original articles on the MCS-4, the first microprocessor

F. Faggin and M. E. Hoff: "Standard Parts and Custom Design Merge in a Four-chip Processor Kit". "Electronics" , April 24, 1972

F. Faggin, et al.: "The MCS-4 An LSI Microcomputer System". "IEEE 1972 Region Six Conference"

Awards

  • 1988: Marconi International Fellowship Award "for his pioneering contributions to the implementation of the microprocessor, a principal building block of modern telecommunications"
  • 1988: Gold Medal for Science and Technology from the Italian Prime Minister
  • 1988: title of "Grande Ufficiale" from the President of the Italian Republic
  • 1994: IEEE W. Wallace McDowell Award "for his outstanding contributions to the computer field through the development of the Silicon Gate Process, and the first commercial microprocessor"
  • 1994: a doctorate honoris causa in Computer Science from the University of Milan (Italy).
  • 1996: Ronald H. Brown American Innovator Award, with M. Hoff and S. Mazor
  • 1996: a Lifetime Achievement Award by P.C. Magazine for "technical excellence".
  • 1997: Kyoto Prize, with M. Hoff, S. Mazor and M. Shima
  • 1996: inducted into National Inventors Hall of Fame, with M. Hoff and S. Mazor
  • 1997: George R. Stibitz Computer Pioneer Award by the American Computer Museum, with M. Hoff and S. Mazor
  • 2001: Dr. Robert Noyce Memorial Award by the Semiconductor Industry Association, with M. Hoff and S. Mazor
  • 2003: doctorate honoris causa in Electronic Engineering from the University of Rome Tor Vergata (Italy)
  • 2003: AeA/Stanford Executive Institute Award for Outstanding Achievement in the High Tech Industry by an Alumnus
  • 2006: European Inventor of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award by EPO (European Patent Office)
  • 2008; Honorary Doctor Degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Palermo (Italy)

Federico Faggin is currently the CEO of Foveon, a Santa Clara (CA) company with a new technology for developing image sensors used in digital photography. He is also chairman of Synaptics and Zilog.

External links

  • Cover of IEDM program: Federico Faggin first presented the new Silicon Gate Technology he created at Fairchild at the IEDM in 1968.
  • Cover of Electronics Sep. 29, 1969: Featuring the Fairchild 3708, the world's first commercial integrated circuit using Silicon Gate Technology, designed by Federico Faggin in 1968.
  • Busicom Calculator Engineering Prototype (Gift of Federico Faggin to the Computer History Museum, Mountain View, California). The CHM collection catalog shows pictures of the engineering prototype of the Busicom 141-PF desktop calculator. The engineering prototype used the world’s first microprocessor to have ever been produced. This one-of-a-kind prototype was a personal present by Busicom’s president Mr. Yoshio Kojima to Federico Faggin for his successful leadership of the design and development of the 4004 and three other memory and I/O chips (the MCS-4 chipset). After keeping it at home for 25 years, Faggin donated it to the CHM in 1996.
  • Foveon "Executive Profile"
  • Zilog Corporate History
  • IEEE Global History Network Biography of Federico Faggin
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