Bijan Davari (

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

: ''بیژن داوری'') is an

Iranian-American Iranian-Americans, also known as Persian-Americans, are United States citizens or nationals who are of Iranian ancestry, or who hold Iranian citizenship. Most Iranian-Americans arrived in the United States after 1979, as a result of the Irani ...

electrical engineer. He is an

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

Fellow and Vice President at IBM Thomas J Watson Research Center, Yorktown Hts, NY. His pioneering work in the

miniaturization Miniaturization ( Br.Eng.: ''miniaturisation'') is the trend to manufacture ever-smaller mechanical, optical, and electronic products and devices. Examples include miniaturization of mobile phones, computers and vehicle engine downsizing. In ele ...

semiconductor devices A semiconductor device is an electronic component that relies on the electronics, electronic properties of a semiconductor material (primarily silicon, germanium, and gallium arsenide, as well as organic semiconductors) for its function. Its co ...

changed the world of

computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, hardware and softw ...

. His research led to the first generation of voltage-scaled deep-submicron

CMOS Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss ", , ) is a type of MOSFET, metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) semiconductor device fabrication, fabrication process that uses complementary an ...

with sufficient performance to totally replace bipolar technology in IBM mainframes and enable new high-performance UNIX servers. As head of IBM’s Semiconductor Research Center (SRDC), he led IBM into the use of Copper interconnect, silicon on insulator (SOI), and Embedded DRAM before its rivals. He is a member of the U.S.

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...

and is known for his seminal contributions to the field of

technology. He is an IEEE Fellow, recipient of the

J J Ebers Award The J. J. Ebers Award was established in 1971 to foster progress in electron devices. It commemorates Jewell James Ebers, whose contributions, particularly to transistors, shaped the understanding and technology of electron devices. It is present ...

in 2005 and IEEE Andrew S. Grove Award in 2010. At the present time, he leads the Next Generation Systems Area of research.

Education

Bijan Davari was born in

Tehran Tehran (; , ''Tehrân'') is the capital and largest city of Iran. It is the capital of Tehran province, and the administrative center for Tehran County and its Central District (Tehran County), Central District. With a population of around 9. ...

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

, in 1954. He received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from

Sharif University of Technology Sharif University of Technology (SUT); (, romanized : Dāneshgāh-e sana'ti-e sharif) is a public research university in Tehran, Iran. It is widely considered to be the nation's most prestigious and leading institution for science, technology ...

, Tehran, Iran, and his master's degree from

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (; RPI) is a private university, private research university in Troy, New York, United States. It is the oldest technological university in the English-speaking world and the Western Hemisphere. It was establishe ...

(RPI). He received his doctorate from RPI in electrical engineering as well with a thesis on the interface behavior of semiconductor devices, and joined IBM Thomas J Watson Research Center in 1984.

Technical achievements

At IBM, Dr. Davari worked on ways to improve

MOSFET upright=1.3, Two power MOSFETs in amperes">A in the ''on'' state, dissipating up to about 100 watt">W and controlling a load of over 2000 W. A matchstick is pictured for scale. In electronics, the metal–oxide–semiconductor field- ...

(metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor) and

(complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor) technology, which provides the basis for much of today's

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...

processing. In 1985, Davari began the task of defining IBM's next generation of CMOS integrated circuits, which came to be called CMOS-5X. He led the research efforts that produced the first generation of high-performance, low voltage deep submicron CMOS technology. CMOS-5X served as the basis for the PowerPC® 601+ and several other microprocessors, including those used in IBM System/390 servers. Dr. Davari defined the roadmap for technology and voltage scaling for IBM which influenced the CMOS roadmap for the industry down to 70 nm regime. This technology led to several generations of high-performance, low-voltage and low-power CMOS technologies that enabled servers, portable

computers A computer is a machine that can be programmed to automatically carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ('' computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as ''programs'', ...

and battery powered handheld devices. Dr. Davari and his team at IBM also demonstrated the first

shallow trench isolation Shallow trench isolation (STI), also known as box isolation technique, is an integrated circuit feature which prevents electric current leakage between adjacent semiconductor device components. STI is generally used on CMOS process technology no ...

(STI) process. STI helps prevent electrical current leakage between semiconductor devices on an integrated circuit. STI process was first used in IBM's 0.5-micrometer technology node for high-performance CMOS logic and in 16-Megabit dynamic RAM. It was eventually used widely throughout the industry. In 1987, Dr. Davari led an IBM research team that demonstrated the first MOSFET with 10 nanometer

gate oxide The gate oxide is the dielectric layer that separates the metal gate, gate terminal of a MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor) from the underlying source and drain terminals as well as the conductive channel that connects ...

thickness, using

tungsten Tungsten (also called wolfram) is a chemical element; it has symbol W and atomic number 74. It is a metal found naturally on Earth almost exclusively in compounds with other elements. It was identified as a distinct element in 1781 and first ...

-gate technology. In 1988, he led an IBM team that demonstrated high-performance dual-gate

devices with 180 nm to 250nm channel lengths. In 1998, Dr. Davari was appointed as the Vice President in charge of IBM’s Semiconductor Research Center (SRDC). In this role he is credited with leading IBM to become a pioneer in the use of Copper Interconnect, silicon on insulator (SOI), and Embedded DRAM. SRDC attracted many industry partners, including semiconductor manufacturers, tools vendors, material suppliers, and chip design houses. The users included the big three in gaming chips Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft’s Xbox--along with Apple for their Mac offerings and AMD. This gave IBM the economy of scale and powerful financial recoveries to sustain and expand its leadership in Semiconductor technology. Dr. Davari was one of the leaders in the

Cell Broadband Engine The Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.) is a 64-bit multi-core processor and microarchitecture developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM—an alliance known as "STI". It combines a general-purpose PowerPC core, called the Power Processing Element (PPE), ...

work at IBM, which was used to build the first Cell-based supercomputer, IBM Roadrunner. In 2008, the Roadrunner supercomputer was the first to break the petaflop barrier, reaching a processing speed of 1.026 petaflops.

Selected awards and honors

IBM Fellow An IBM Fellow is a position at IBM appointed by the CEO. Typically only four to nine (eleven in 2014) IBM Fellows are appointed each year, in May or June. Fellow is the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achieve. Over ...

, 1996. *

, 2005 * IEEE Andrew S. Grove Award, 2010 *

, 2014

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Davari, Bijan Living people IBM Fellows American electronics engineers IBM employees Fellows of the IEEE Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering 1954 births Iranian electrical engineers Iranian electronics engineers Sharif University of Technology alumni American people of Iranian descent