Ross Freeman

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Ross H. Freeman (born July 26, 1944 in Michigan - † October 22, 1989 ) was an American physicist. He was a major developer in the field of electronic semiconductor components and a pioneer in the first available programmable logic arrays, so-called Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA). He was also a co-founder of the company Xilinx, which is still active in this business field today . In 2009, Freeman was posthumously inducted into the US National Inventors Hall of Fame for developing the first FPGA .

Life

Ross Freeman graduated from Michigan State University with a bachelor's degree in physics in 1969 and a master’s degree from the University of Illinois in 1971 . He then worked for the former telecommunications company Teletype Corporation where he developed various PMOS semiconductor circuits. He then worked at Zilog , where he was one of the first employees to work on the development of the Z8000 in the late 1970s .

At the beginning of the 1980s he began developing programmable logic arrays (FPGA) whose basic structures, which are still used today, he patented in 1984. In addition to the structure of the array, Freeman's idea consisted of using static memory cells (SRAMs) for the interconnection and configuration within the FPGA , which are loaded with the configuration data from a read-only memory when the component is activated . In contrast to the competing “hard-wired” application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), this made it possible to make changes to the structure of the digital circuit in the FPGA at short notice.

In 1984 he founded the company Xilinx together with Bernie Vonderschmitt and Jim Barnett in Silicon Valley . Freeman died of a chronic illness five years after the company was founded.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Remembering Ross Freeman. Retrieved July 13, 2013 .
  2. ^ National Inventors Hall of Fame, Ross Freeman. Archived from the original on September 25, 2012 ; Retrieved July 11, 2013 .
  3. ↑ Patent US4870302 : Configurable electrical circuit having configurable logic elements and configurable interconnects. Filed March 12, 1984 , published September 26, 1989 , inventor: Ross H. Freeman. ‌
personal data
SURNAME Freeman, Ross
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Freeman, Ross H.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist
DATE OF BIRTH July 26, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Michigan
DATE OF DEATH October 22, 1989