Yoshio Nishi

Biography

Dr. Yoshio Nishi has blazed an exceptional trail in the field of semiconductor research and development. During his two decades of leadership with Toshiba, from 1962-1982, he pioneered such strategies as R&D and production collocation, and overlapping, staggered R&D teams, which resulted in highly efficient technology development and delivery, and made Toshiba a top manufacturer of DRAM. His revolutionary concept of pre-competitive partnership continues to allow the semiconductor industry to share risk and cost. He also led the development teams responsible for the world’s first mass-produced 1-Mbit CMOS DRAM, 256k CMOS SRAM. These advances led to the global shift in VLSI technology from nMOS to CMOS.

At Hewlett-Packard, from 1986-1995, his high-performance CMOS team developed 0.8 and 0.5 micron technologies, which enabled the company to commercialize the world’s fastest CMOS RISC machines. As senior vice president and director of the Research and Development Semiconductor Group at Texas Instruments, Dr. Nishi has continued to advance the industry through collaborative initiatives such as International Sematech and Seminconductor Research Corporation. He also is credited with helping TI become a leader in silicon technology.

An IEEE Fellow, Dr. Nishi has published more than 120 papers. He has written and co-authored several books and holds more than 50 patents. His honors include the IEEE Jack A. Morton Award.