Bob Widlar - National Semiconductor

National Semiconductor

Widlar and Talbert realized that the founders of Fairchild did not intend to share their windfall profits with the designers. In November 1965 the two engineers accepted Peter Sprague's offer to join the National Semiconductor's Molectro facility in Santa Clara. Widlar received an immediate stock option of 20,000 shares, each valued at five dollars then. He refused to fill an exit interview form for Fairchild and wrote only one line (exact quote): "I want to be RICH!" He told Hulme that the only thing that could keep him with Fairchild was "One million tax free by whatever way you choose". For unknown reasons, Robert Noyce, one of Fairchild's founders, continued to pay Widlar his salary until April 1966. According to Widlar, "Maybe they did not believe that I was actually leaving. Some people are really a little slow."

Gifford said that Widlar and Talbert were actually the founders of National Semiconductor, and that Sporck joined them later. The duo started by setting up the epitaxial process at Santa Clara. Once the technology was in place, Widlar concentrated on voltage regulators and by the end of 1966 produced the industry's first integrated linear regulator. The LM100, a revolutionary new circuit, became another flagship product that surpassed expectations for sales and longevity. In 1967 Widlar designed the LM101, an operational amplifier with improved gain, decreased input current, and protection against short circuit. The LM101 featured another unorthodox input stage, employing PNP transistors in common base arrangement. Its frequency compensation was more robust and stable than that of μA709. It was followed by LM101A, a functionally identical IC that pioneered the use of a field-effect transistor to control internal current sources. Widlar's solution minimized die area and current drain, and enabled operation over a wide range of power supply voltages. Later he devised another new device, the super-beta transistor. It was created in silicon by Talbert and integrated in the LM108 precision operational amplifier, which was released in 1969. These high-gain, very-low-voltage devices were capable of operating at very low input currents within the full military range of operating conditions. The items in the linear circuit product line were user friendly, very useful, and very profitable.

In the late 1960s Widlar experimented with the band gap phenomenon and converted his basic current source block into a bandgap voltage reference. The "Widlar's Leap" resulted in a robust and stable reference that was crucial for high-current, heat-intensive applications. Widlar created another industry first by combining a power transistor and a precise voltage reference on the same die. This device, LM109 voltage regulator, was released in 1969 and at first went unnoticed. In 1971 National Semiconductor released Widlar's LM113, the first dedicated, two-terminal voltage reference IC.

Widlar and Talbert were instrumental in the takeover of National Semiconductor by former Fairchild managers Charles Sporck and Pierre Lamond in February 1967. Sporck and Lamond turned National into a leading producer of electronic circuits, and Fairchild slipped into an irreversible decline. Widlar's popularity in the industry soared: advertised as "the man who designed more than half of the world's linear circuits", he frequently gave lectures to fellow engineers, and on May 23, 1970, spoke to an audience at Madison Square Garden. Regis McKenna, former National Semiconductor executive, said in 1995 that "most of the linear devices that were probably built and marketed for the period of the sixties and seventies were based on Widlar and Talbert's technology. I mean they created, in many ways, this industry... they were the Steve Jobs and the Bill Gates, and whatever fame you want to give to anybody, they were famous people of those days. And the journals... you couldn't find a journal without their picture in it...".