Mannerisms

There was once a CEO whose company made a wonderful microprocessor. He was so proud of it that he wanted as many people as possible to use it.

There was once a lonely engineer in Japan who believed that MOS transistors were the future.

 Two empires once fought to gain supremacy over each other.

There was once a company which was highly regarded for its technological excellence. One day, one of its products was found to be faulty.

There was once a great company where the middle management were afraid to tell the senior management bad news.

There was once a CEO who asked his CFO: "How much market share do I need to support my investment in this product line". The CFO replied: "Ten per cent".

There was once a wise man who started a semiconductor company. He understood the industry, and surrounded himself with the best people in his area. They made superior products which could always find markets at good margins.

There was once a great chip company which invented a new product category, semi-custom, and dominated the market for it for a decade.

There was once a great company which was very good at linear ICs. It spent a lot of money trying to get into digital products - so much that many of its best linear people left to form their own linear companies.

There was once a persistent entrepreneur who founded a chip company which became, at the time, the fastest growing company Silicon Valley had ever known. It could produce a chip-set replicating a new version of an IBM PC at the same time as IBM could do it and in fewer chips than IBM could do it.

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At the back end of the '60s a new chip company set out to make MOS memories and microprocessors. It brought out the industry standard 16K DRAM, and led the memory market at the 16k and 64k generations.

There was once a semiconductor company with a simple, successful strategy: To make all the chips inside a PC except the microprocessor and the memory.

There was once a genius who made a fundamental building block which ensured fabulous riches for the electronics industry for sixty years.