Artifact Details

Title

Blalock, Travis oral history

Catalog Number

102717371

Type

Document

Description

Travis Blalock earned a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in 1988 and a Ph.D. from Auburn University in 1991. He joined Hewlett-Packard Labs in 1991 where he designed a PRML disk drive read channel chip, created the Labs' CMOS process variation methodology, and then designed an analog prototype of
the optical navigation chip for the HP CapShare handheld scanner product. This 200-mW chip included an image sensor and a 2D correlation engine with an equivalent computing power of 1.5 Giga-operations per second. The technology was later used in the HP optical mouse. His
last project at HP Labs was an eyeglass display chip with a resolution of 1024x768 pixels, a frame rate of 60Hz, and per-pixel pulse-width modulation drivers for the on-chip reflective color LCD display.

In 1998 Dr. Blalock left HP to join the University of Virginia as an Associate Professor. His work on integrated imaging and signal processing, smart sensors, low-voltage low-power design, and analog design techniques led him to co-found an ultrasonic imaging start-up company,
PocketSonics. He served as CEO and CTO of the company until its acquisition by Analogic in 2013, when he became an Analogic Fellow and its Chief Architect for handheld medical ultrasound imaging systems.

Date

2018-08-03

Contributor

Blalock, Travis, Interviewee
Steinbach, Gunter, Interviewer

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Charlottesville, VA

Extent

19 p.

Format

PDF

Category

Transcription

Subject

2D Correlation; analog signal processing; CapShare; CMOS Process Variation; DRAM Sense Amplifarier; Eyeglass LCD Display; Haewlett-Packard Laboratory; image sensor; optical mouse; Optical Navigation Chip; PocketSonics; PRML Disk Drive Channel; University of Virginia

Collection Title

CHM Oral History

Credit

Computer History Museum

Lot Number

X8779.2019

Related Records

102717372 Blalock, Travis oral history