David Thompson joined IEEE as a student at South Dakota School of Mines & Technology in 1976, contributing as Branch Chair 1977-78. He graduated from SDSM&T in December 1978 with a degree in Electrical Engineering and is a member of HKN and Tau Beta Pi. He then joined Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where he contributed to design of the first 32-bit CMOS microprocessor. He earned a Master’s in Engineering from Stanford University in 1980. With more than 45 years of industry experience, David Thompson has published more than 70 papers and holds several U.S. patents.
David was promoted to Technical Manager, building a team which designed 70 re-usable storage, computing and communication blocks which generated over $2 billion in sales. He led the team that created the first USB2 and 1394B products, technologies used to connect devices to a computer and transfer data quickly. Thompson served 10 years on the boards for both the USB and 1394 Associations and was elevated to IEEE Senior Member in 1989.
During his time at Intel, he contributed to generations of cellular chips, leading 5G worldwide. Currently, he is serving as Section Chair for Lehigh Valley’s IEEE Section, is the past Secretary, past EDS Chair and is an active member of the IEEE Standards Association. He also consults on 5G testing.
Thompson believes that Life members can be a major core of volunteer strength for Sections. One of his goals is to start an LMAG in the Lehigh Valley where we have more than 150 Life Members.
