Dr. Fujio Masuoka Biography - The inventor of flash

Dr. Fujio Masuoka

Fujio Masuoka was born on May 8, 1943 in Takasaki City, Gunma, Japan, he is the inventor of flash memory. When he was 10 years old, his mother encouraged him to study mathematics and hire a private teacher. By the time he was 12 years old, Masuoka managed to master mathematics. In high school, Masuoka concentrated on the theory, believes that advances in electronic technology or achieved only through theoretical work. As a result of his studies, Masuoka also developed a deep understanding of economics and law. He holds a Bachelor of Science, Master of Science and PhD in electrical engineering from Tohoku University respectively in 1966, 1968 and 1971. Soon after graduating, Masuoka joined the Toshiba Research and Development Center in April 1971.

Runs for three months in his new job, the boss Masuoka, Dr. Yoshiyuki Takeishi, showing a memory electrically Ultraviolet Erasable Programmable Intel Masuoka (UV EEPROM), which was announced several months earlier. Intel technology Masuoka then studied in two months and find a new structure, a memory type MOS read-only memory which is known by the name Samos is the first patent in 1972 Masuoka.

Between 1972 and 1984, Masuoka made another significant breakthrough memory, dynamic memory cell pair with a double poly-silicon structure. In 1977, he moved to Toshiba's semiconductor division, where he developed a 1 Mbit DRAM memory.


Masuoka and then transferred to Toshiba memory engineered products division in 1980 to begin his work on the development of flash memory. He then shifted to the memory design engineering division of Toshiba in 1984, where he perfected and patented NOR flash memory. He presented his findings at the International Electron Device Meeting (IEDM) in San Francisco. A year later, he progressed to 256 Kbit flash memory. In April 1987, Masuoka returned to Toshiba Research and Development Center, where he began work to develop more advanced NAND-type flash memory flash disk embryo. Although groundbreaking, flash is not ready for commercialization.

To create and produce pre-fabricated commercial 4 Mbit flash memory chip, Masuoka takes to develop high-tech

projected for a variety of circuit patterns on each layer of the microprocessor. But the estimated cost to make the technology is 10 million yen, which Toshiba initially reluctant to invest. Masuoka assure Toshiba's consumer electronics research executives that the 4 Mbit flash memory chip can be used for consumer digital cameras into the flash memory that serves as a "digital film." With funding from the consumer electronics division, Masuoka continued to develop and present the flash 4 Mbit NAND-type flash memory on Solid-State Circuits Conference International (ISSCC) in New York City in 1989.


In 1994, Masuoka joined Tohoku University where he was a professor for 13 years before being appointed as Professor of the University Research Institute of Electrical Communication. For his pioneering work on flash memory, Masuoka has received numerous honors and awards in Japan including the Japan Prize from the Prime Minister Watanabe in 1977 and National Award discovery in 1980. In 2007, Masuoka was awarded the Purple Ribbon Medal from the Emperor Akihito.

Flash is not only growing in size alone, but form and function is also changing. There is a flash drive that uses a rotary design, so we do not have to worry about losing the lid. There are also rubber coated flash drive to hold water or comes with a carabineer clip so easy to hang. Has even made flash drives shaped model of a credit card. His name is wallet-friendly USB. It measures only 86 x 54 x 1.9 mm. Thus, it can be stored safely in your wallet.

For safety concerns have limited the current flash drive to protect data that is so not accessible by non-owners. The workings are in use today include using full disk encryption or physical authentication tokens. New system was introduced in 2005, is a biometric fingerprinting. However, these security methods are very expensive because it uses high technology in fact the use of flash drives have been developed for various things. For example in an article described the steps to setting the flash drive to boot Windows XP. The main requirement is the motherboard and the BIOS of the computer we can support booting from flash drive management. Some applications can also be run from a flash drive without having to install it first to your computer.