Tom Frederiksen, RIP

So what integrated circuits did he design?

Slowman? Are you exhibiting your true ignorance or just seeking podium time ?>:-} ...Jim Thompson

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Thinking outside the box... producing elegant solutions.

"It is not in doing what you like, but in liking what you do that is the secret of happiness." -James Barrie

I have four from his set of "Intuitive" Circuit Design books, and enjoyed them very much. It's sad to see the good ones go.

Indeed!

Many of my creations (AND Tom's) were due to the fact that we constantly battered (and/or taunted) each other's designs, resulting in superb outcomes.

The "Thompson" current mirror in this link...

came about from a "coffee-bet" with Tom that I couldn't possibly make a lateral-PNP current mirror with a stable output.

Likewise...

was a joint effort.

And many others.

(I'm referenced on page 14-15 of Tom's "Intuitive IC Op Amps") ...Jim Thompson

I'd never even heard of the guy, so my ignorance is on display. If Jim actually knew the part number of any IC Frederiksen designed, I presume he'd have posted it, so Jim's ignorance is displayed equally clearly.

You might just have an ego problem when the occasion of a man's death is used promote yourself. Your ego has no bounds, does it?

THAT'S how you read that? Jim was talking about working with Tom. Sounds like mutual respect to me.

Yes, indeed! Great guy! ...Jim Thompson

is

But Jim can't name an integrated circuit he designed. He can remember that the guy prompted Jim to come up with an interesting innovation, but can't b ring himself to document anything Frederiksen himself was responsible for.

Trump and Larkin behave like that.

I know he was a specialist in high-power IC design, see his 1968 paper in JSSC, "A Monolithic High-Power Series Voltage Regulator", and with James Solomon, "A High-Performance 3-Watt Monolithic Class-B Power Amplifier"; both were probably Motorola parts. And I have his paper on a Monolithic-Sonar-System. There are likely many more papers if one were to look. He also had patents, which I have stored in my computer.

I'm curious about the two Motorola papers I quoted.

Yes, the NSC scene, as in the patents, needs to be filled out by somebody else, and sadly it can't be Bob Pease!

I'm not sure they are Motorola papers. By 1968, they both may have left Motorola... there was some turmoil in those days ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Both papers list Motorola affiliation, that is they were Motorola paid-for projects. Check them out on DropBox.

With that name I assume Jim had Swedish family background and I always knew that for some reasons Swedes were great engineers. RIP,

Oops, I mixed up Jim's name with Tom's. Sorry.

The first paper looks as if it might correspond to the LM4871 - which is not a number I ever ran into, and sounds a good deal later than 1968. The LM380 and LM384 seem to fit the bill better - the LM380 is credited with 2.5W on the data sheet, and the LM3284 was a selected part that could survive a higher supply voltage and was rated for 5W.

The second part is a voltage regulator, and Bob Widlar managed to corner most of the glory there.

Ahem, both were Motorola designs rather than NSC. But I suppose it's possible neither were put into production.

Paper "1968_Frederiksen,Solomon_amplifier.pdf" is MC1554... the output stage is my scheme... a sliding class-A version can be seen in the MC1530/31 OpAmps.

Paper "Frederiksen_regulator_JSSC(1968).pdf" looks like am LM117 regulator. I am unaware of what Motorola might have called it, I was not involved with regulators at that point-in-time, just PLL's and A/D/A (and I might have been away at Philco-Ford doing automotive stuff :-).

Note that Figure 6 is my current mirror scheme (not credited in standard Jim Solomon style). He was a cretin who got his ass publicly handed to him on a platter by writing a paper claiming he created the Gilbert multiplier.

It'll take me a few days to got thru the patents (*), but US4607172 is an NSC comparator, part number unknown, should have be found to infringe my patent US3638041, MC1650/51 MECL Comparators.

(*) I use Patent Fetcher which restricts me to 6 per 24 hour period without charge ;-) ...Jim Thompson

When two patents cover the same invention it's called "interference", not "infringement".

Google Patents is free. IIRC some of the PDFs aren't OCRed. Those ones, I usually fix using any2djvu:

I like the djvu format, and it's unlikely to be vulnerable to PDF nasties anyway.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs