Dr. is the inventor of flash memory

Flash memory

Flash memory is a non-volatile computer storage chip that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. It was developed from EEPROM and must be erased in fairly large blocks before these can be rewritten with new data...

. He joined Toshiba

Toshiba

is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...

 in 1971. There he also developed SAMOS memory. Dr. Masuoka was excited mostly by the idea of non-volatile memory

Non-volatile memory

Non-volatile memory, nonvolatile memory, NVM or non-volatile storage, in the most basic sense, is computer memory that can retain the stored information even when not powered. Examples of non-volatile memory include read-only memory, flash memory, ferroelectric RAM, most types of magnetic computer...

, memory that would last even when power was turned off. He is now a professor at Tohoku University

Tohoku University

, abbreviated to , located in the city of Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture in the Tōhoku Region, Japan, is a Japanese national university. It is the third oldest Imperial University in Japan and is a member of the National Seven Universities...

 in Sendai

Sendai, Miyagi

is the capital city of Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, and the largest city in the Tōhoku Region. In 2005, the city had a population of one million, and was one of Japan's 19 designated cities...

, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

.

Masuoka received the 1997 IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award

IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award

The initially called Morris Liebmann Memorial Prize provided by the Institute of Radio Engineers , the IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award was created in 1919 in honor of Colonel Morris N. Liebmann. It was initially given to awardees who had "made public during the recent past an important...

 of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.
Since 2005 Masuoka has been working as the CTO of Unisantis Electronics aiming to develop a three dimensional transistor.

See also

• Flash memory
  Flash memory
  Flash memory is a non-volatile computer storage chip that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. It was developed from EEPROM and must be erased in fairly large blocks before these can be rewritten with new data...