AAGILE COMPUTING

VINOD DHAM – CEO Silicon Spice
B.E. (Electrical), Delhi College of Engineering, 1971

From the hills near Rawalpindi to the Valley, the Dhams have gone through a fascinating journey. Coming to India during Partition as refugees, Dham’s father joined the army as a civilian. Dham was born in Pune (across the railway station in Cowasji Hospital, says Dham) as his father was posted there. His early education was in Pune and Dham considers himself a Puneite, speaking fluent Marathi.

Dham wanted to know 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.

However, Dham wanted more action and started looking around. At that time, the 386 chip had been designed and had gone for production. Dham wanted to get into microprocessors, he applied for a job in that division but he was rejected since the project was on course. That would not deter a determined Dham. He went nosing around and found that there were problems in production. The fab thought may be it was at fault and was cleaning up its shop, the designers were at tethers end after several redesigns and Dham thought he could lick the problem. He went to the programme manager and told him that he would act as his consultant and need not be given a formal position. When Dham straightened out the problem, Intel’s fortunes shot up and the boss was happy. So he made him in charge of 386 and went on to 486 himself.

Pentium was a challenge in many ways; 486 was more integration than innovation. Paranoia was absolutely at the top.

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.

Photographs and certificates from Andy Grove and Craig Barret about 386, 486 and Pentium adorn Dham’s office walls 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.

Bill Gates, billionaire chairman and chief executive officer of the Microsoft Corporation – was born in Seattle in the north-west US on October 28, 1955. A “typical competitive Scorpio”, he says. Gates’ father was an attorney in Seattle, and his mother a teacher. He has two sisters, one older and one younger than him. Gates went to a private school in Seattle, and later to college at Harvard. He dropped out of Harvard at 19 when he and his friend Paul Allen created the company Microsoft – now the leading provider of software for personal computers in the world. Gates’ feeling that personal computers would be big business, and his continual clear vision, are central to Microsoft and to the entire software industry today. Starting out as two people, Gates and Allen, Microsoft grew quickly to 12 people by 1979, and Allen and Gates decided to move from Albuquerque to Seattle. Within a year the company had grown to 35 and they hired their first professional manager, Steve Bullmer. To encourage Bullmer to join them they offered him a stake of Microsoft- he now owns 5%, worth 2.7 billion dollars. Today Microsoft employs more than 20,000 people in 48countries of the world. When Gates and Allen first set up in business, they learned as they went along. Paul Allen admits that “our management style was a little loose in the beginning. We both took part in every decision. If there was a difference between our roles, I was probably the one always pushing a little bit in terms of new technology and new products, and Bill was more interested in doing negotiations and contracts and business deals.” Paul Allen left the company in 1983 when he became ill with Hodgkin’s Disease. He was badly missed by Bill Gates for a long time. In Hawaii on January 1, 1994 Gates married Melinda, a product manager at Microsoft. They have a daughter, born in 1996. One of the richest men in the world, Gates annually gives away more than most people earn in a lifetime. He says he plans to give most of his money away in about ten years, “I plan to go from the world’s richest man to the world’s largest philanthropist.” Gates is interested in biotechnology and is on the board of Darwin Molecular and the Icos Corporation. He is an enthusiastic reader and also enjoys golf and bridge. He is a very hard worker and his idea of relaxation is to race Melinda at identical jigsaw puzzles.