Honeywell
Joining a New Workplace
In 1967 Bill accepted a position as a Memory Design Engineer in Honeywell's Computer Control Company (3C) Division. Ironically, his manager at Honeywell, Royce Fletcher, also assigned him lab research and report writing just like at Bell Labs. Instead of designing, modeling, and building memory components, he spent his days reading, researching, and writing. Frustrated, Bill rebelled a little bit by charging his timecard to his manager's overhead account, an account he was specifically instructed not to use. After a heated argument between Bill and Fletcher they started to see eye to eye. He finally started to receive projects more aligned with his interests. One such project was his work on the Honeywell 316 minicomputer (H316).
In the 1960s and early 1970s, Honeywell specialized in the production of minicomputers. Part of Honeywell and 3C’s 16-bit computer line known as Series 16 computers, the 316 minicomputer (H316) was originally a general purpose computer but was later advertised as the Kitchen Computer and sold for less than $10,000.
During production of the H316, project manager Dave House approached Honeywell’s memory design unit searching for memory solutions that were low cost to produce. As leader of the design team, Bill proposed repurposing the original hardware of the DDP-516, the predecessor of the H316, instead of building new, specialized hardware.
In 1966, Honeywell had acquired a handful of other companies in order to expand their product lines, including 3C. That year, 3C developed the Digital Data Processor-516 (DDP-516) a computer that used integrated circuits called µ-pacs (micro-pacs) allowing the once very large computers in the industry to be reduced in size.
To store data, the DDP-516 minicomputer used a system of 2-inch by 3-inch memory modules. These memory modules then stacked three high and in rows of eight or nine wide. Repurposing the hardware, a 4k by 8 memory module was taken, laid out, the cords strung together and then folded into a W shape. This made the memory module both pluggable and expandable, allowing increased memory space and optional hardware extensions.
Moving to Semiconductors
To maintain their competitive edge, Honeywell shifted their focus away from the development of minicomputers to the advancement of mainframe technology. The company needed to reorganize and staff were informed in a meeting that Honeywell was forming a new semiconductor memory group.
During that meeting, Regitz recalled sitting near his colleague, Bill Jordan, who worked in the same department. Regitz recalled that neither of them knew about this new arrangement. Honeywell put Regitz and Jordan together and provided them with a budget and resources to investigate new technologies in semiconductor memory. The semiconductor memory division was newly established but not haphazardly created. Born out of his work with Texas Instruments in developing integrated drivers for core memories, Bill Jordan advocated for the division. He believed semiconductors were the future of technology.
Jordan wanted to work on two semiconductor programs, bipolar junction transistor (BJT) and metal-oxide-semiconductor Field Effect transistor (MOSFET) based systems. These differed from core memory because they used integrated circuits and semiconductors. Integrated circuit technology was faster and more cost-effective. Semiconductor materials can be considered a broad term for different types of transistors. Early bipolar semiconductors used at this time included transistors that were made from a germanium material. MOS transistors used primarily silicon. The three layers within that transistor included a metal conductor, an insulating silicon layer and a semiconductor silicon layer. When an electrical voltage is applied, the balance of the electrical charge between the metal conductor and the semiconductor layer is altered, allowing for the storage of binary information.
Regitz chose to concentrate on the newer MOS technology. To get the foundation he needed, Regitz carried out research and read papers about MOS transistors. John Defalco, another Honeywell engineer, worked in a semiconductor group at 3C that looked at simple MOS design. In collaboration with Defalco, Regitz built a circuit simulation program that analyzed models and tested how MOS worked within an integrated circuit.
