Shri
Vinod Dham
|
 Shri
Vinod Dham, father of the Pentium chip, graduated
from Delhi College of Engineering in 1971 in Electrical
Engineering. Dham became interested in knowing as to what
went on inside the devices. And so, after convincing his
parents he went to Cincinnati in 1975 to do an MS EE in
Solid State Sciences. Cincinnati, at that time, was a
very good school in microelectronics, with even a fab
on campus and was widely supported by the semiconductor
industry. After MS Dham went to Dayton and joined MCR.
At IEEE conference in Monterrey, California, where Shri
Dham was presenting, the Intel people were also there
presenting their work. It was there, that Intel invited
Dham to join Intel. After successfully completing the
Pentium project Shri Dham was facing a midlife crisis.
“The best thing that happened to me was joining
Intel and the best thing that happened to me was leaving
Intel”, says Dham in one of his crisp should bytes
that make him so popular with journalists. He joined Nexgen,
which was a startup that was acquired by AMD later. After
helping AMD seriously challenge Intel with its vastly
popular K6, Dham left AMD and joined Silicon Spice, a
startup, as Chairman, President and CEO though others
had founded it. “It has been the best part of my
life, building teams, products, raising money, talking
to customers and finally selling it to Broadcom, a company
which might become tomorrow’s Cisco”, he says.
Silicon Spice has been acquired by Broadcom for $1.2 billion
and everybody, including some office staff, have become
millionaires. Photographs and certificates from Andy Grove
and Craig Barret about 386, 486 and Pentium adorn Dham’s
office walls Intel and one from Bill Clinton surround
Dham’s office as well as one from Bill Clinton for
being the presidential advisor on minorities. Noticeably
his latest chip, Calisto – its very first copy that
passed all tests – lies at the feet of a small Ganapati
statue on his table. Dham’s favourite hobby is carpentry
and his favourite “TV show is Home Improvement.
“Tool Man Tim Taylor’s Do it yourself does
not quite work. This hi-tech craftsman’s chips sure
do. |
