Bob Proebsting, a member of Mostek's founding team, passed away in
Sonora, California on Sunday. He led the Circuit Design activity at
Mostek back in the Sprague days, and later the DRAM design work. Bob
designed the MK-4096 (in metal gate PMOS), Mostek's first 4K DRAM.
It introduced address multiplexing, fast page mode, RAS, CAS, and all
the rest. Then Bob and Paul Schroeder designed a new 4K for a new
fab process, silicon gate NMOS. It was the MK-4027, which was a huge
success for Mostek. Bob's next chip design was arguably his
masterpiece, the MK-4116 16K DRAM, which won enormous market share
(I've heard 70+ percent) and which got directly copied, polygon for
polygon, by a dozen competitors. Even the Russians copied the Mostek
4116.

Bob left Mostek just before the Thomson acquisition, and joined a
bunch of former Mostekers (Dennis Segers, Jerry Taylor, Doug
Sheppard, Bob Kertis, etc) at Fairchild in Puyallup, WA. Then on to
Intergraph (microprocessors), Hyundai (DRAMs), IDT (DRAMS and CAMS),
and Sun Microsystems Labs (high speed I/O).

His family is planning to hold a memorial service for Bob in Silicon
Valley, where many of his friends and former colleagues live. I am
told it will be sometime in the next two weeks, but date and place
and time are not yet finalized. I will relay that information here
as soon as I receive it.

On a personal note, Bob Proebsting was the single reason why I went
to work at Mostek. He was THE MAN in DRAM circuit design and I
wanted a chance to work with (& learn from) a giant in the field.
One of the proudest accomplishments of my young life was to survive a
one-on-one job interview (which included a quiz at the whiteboard)
with Bob Proebsting, and not get completely sliced to ribbons. He
was a wonderful teacher and a generous mentor, and I'll miss him
greatly.

Mark Johnson

MostekLives!
Mary.Hall@pobox.com - Last updated June 7, 2007

This page was created by Mary Hall, summer intern 1984, daughter of Bill Waller (1974-1989) and niece of Jerry Taylor (1972-1986?)