Confront the Problem Dov Frohman Was Actually Solving at Intel

# Confront the Problem Dov Frohman Was Actually Solving at Intel

## 1. A Reliability Problem, Not a Memory Project

In 1971, Dov Frohman was an engineer at Intel working on a question that had nothing to do with inventing a new memory product: why did some floating-gate MOS test transistors retain an electrical charge for an unexpectedly long time, and why did others lose it? Frohman held a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and had joined Intel's process-engineering group studying the reliability of floating-gate structures that Dawon Kahng and Simon Min Sze had proposed at Bell Labs years earlier as a conceptual non-volatile memory element. The floating-gate device existed as a laboratory curiosity with a known defect: nobody had a practical way to erase it once charge was placed on the isolated gate. Frohman's actual assignment was diagnostic, not inventive — track down why some devices on a test wafer held their trapped charge for days while bond-wire failures caused others to behave erratically.