Has the semiconductor industry changed over the years? It's the sort of question people ask from time to time, usually in a bar.
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A good story is told by Wilf Corrigan, one of the founding CEOs of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), about how the SIA got founded.
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It was a culture clash between the flexible ethics of the PR community and the inflexible integrity of corporate Japan.
"Y'noo wa soo many semiconductor companies come to Scurtland to set up manufacturing plants?".
Most of the many stories which are told about the legendary analogue designer Bob Widlar, relate to his epic capacity for the sauce.
David Potter, founder of Psion, tells a surreal yarn describing the sudden demise of the UK personal computer industry.
Jurgen Knorr, President of Siemens Semiconductors (which became Infineon) between 1984 and 1996, tells a good story about how Europe, despite many mishaps, got up to speed on chip manufacturing in the 1980s and 90s.
A revealing yarn is told by Peter Gillibrand, GEC's PR man during the reign of GEC's long-serving and much feared boss, Lord Arnold Weinstock.
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Dr Tsugio Makimoto, former President of Hitachi Semiconductors and Senior Corporate Vice-President and CTO at Sony, the author of 'Makimoto's Wave', tells an amusing yarn about how the World Semiconductor Council got established.
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Maybe the reason why Gordon Moore and Charlie Sporck both have Hawaiian residences goes back over 40 years on the evidence of a yarn told by Sporck.
How many modern CEOs of wireless operators, usually obsessed by mega deals in foreign lands, pay much attention to the quality of their networks?
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David Ashworth, CEO of Memec, the world's third largest distributor before it was taken over by Avnet, tells an excellent yarn of the travails of a distie's existence.
A great yarn about how the ARM1, the original ARM architecture microprocessor, was built, is told by Professor Steve Furber, Professor of Computer Engineering at Manchester University, who co-developed the chip with Sophie Wilson.
Pasquale Pistorio, who took the loss-making, $100 million revenue Italian chip company SGS, and transformed it into the highly profitable, $10 billion revenue, top ten chip company STMicroelectronics, tells an amusing tale of leaving Motorola in 1980, where he was worldwide director of marketing, and the first non-American ever to be elected to the Motorola baord.
Ted Hoff, inventor of the microprocessor, tells an interesting yarn about how he came to join Intel as the company's 12th employee. Within three years of joining he had earned his place in history.by coming up with the 4004, the world's first commercial microprocessor.
It's a little known fact that the legendary chip designer Bob Widlar, who designed the 709 op amp and the LM10 op amp voltage reference, would, on occasion, turn his hand to designing advertisements with his friend the Silicon Valley PR genius Regis McKenna.
Bob's brother, Jim Widlar, very kindly sent me the result of one of these exercises, and it has to be the best ad the semiconductor industry ever produced.
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Dick Skipworth, founder of Memec, which became the third largest distributor in the world before being taken over by Avnet, is the subject of an amusing tale by Memec's long-time CFO, Colin Stevens.
Ulrich Schumacher, who was the first CEO of Infineon Technologies when it spun out of Siemens, tells an amusing yarn of his days as a marketing guy at Siemens Semiconductors.
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It is a little known fact that, before he left Fairchild Semiconductor to become the CEO of National Semiconductor, Charlie Sporck had several meetings with Sir John Clark, CEO of Plessey, about him becoming CEO of Plessey Semiconductors.
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Founded in 1990 with less than two million pounds of venture capital, ARM looked destined for a rocky ride. Founding CEO Sir Robin Saxby remembers a grim race against time to establish the company before the money ran out.
One of the famous events of early chip industry history was the reaction of Sherman Fairchild, backer of Fairchild Semiconductor, to the resignations of Bob Noyce, Gordon Moore and Andy Grove when they went to found Intel. His reaction was to hire the top management of Motorola Semiconductor. Pasquale Pistorio remembers how he was sorely tempted.
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Hans Snook was the most colourful and successful of all the early cellular pioneers, establishing the Orange network. But he stumbled into the wireless telecoms industry completely by chance.
Hermann Hauser, founder and CEO of Acorn Computers, then founder and CEO of VC company Amadeus, and the backer of numerous successful start-ups from ARM, to Virata to Element 14 to Plastic Logic and Icera, tells an amusing tale about one of his less successful ventures.
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Brian Halla, CEO of National Semiconductor, previously at LSI Logic and Intel, tells how the whole industry's economics used to come down to one thing: how do you keep the fab full, and so defray the enormous cost of building it.
In iWeek, the week that is supposed to witness the transformation, re-invention and Second Coming of the mobile phone, it's worth asking how on earth does Steve Jobs get his people to come up with these blockbuster products?
David Potter, the founder of Psion, tells a good yarn about the company’s early days, when Psion was getting along by developing computer games. Psion was founded in 1980 and this story takes place in 1981.
One of the most famous yarns in the history of the chip industry is told about Kazuo Iwama of Sony who was the brother-in-law of Sony founder Akio Morita, and Morita’s successor as president of Sony.
Sir Clive Sinclair tells a good yarn about how his company came up with the world’s first single-chip scientific calculator.
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Steve Jobs, of course, is God Almighty, but Andy Herzfeld tells a hilarious yarn about the Great Man’s foibles in his book Revolution in the Valley.
Why does a guy start spending his money like a drunken sailor on shore leave? Well he could actually be a drunken sailor on shore leave, but another likely reason is because of a woman.
Julius Blank, one of Fairchild's eight founders, tells a hilarious yarn about the night Bob Noyce turned up to join Shockley Semiconductor. Charlie Sporck recounts the tale in his book Spinoff.
Sex with a zillionaire is not all it’s cracked up to be, according to a novel written by zillionaire Tom Perkins, co-founder of Silicon Valley’s premier venture capital company, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers.
Colin Stevens, former CFO of Memec which became the world's third largest distributor before being bought by Avnet, tells a tale of cultural differences as the company expanded into Japan.
One of the saddest stories of the computer industry came full circle yesterday when it was ruled by a US court that DOS copied CP/M.
The funniest of all the Bill Gates stories is told by Robert Cringely in his book Accidental Empires. It happened in 1990.
George W Bush is not the first to come up against the dry humour of the Scottish. Bush called Gordon Brown 'the humorous Scotsman' last week. Some years ago the Prince of Wales encountered another humorous Scotsman.
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Summer has arrived. Iced sauvignon is on the garden table. The salads are laid out. The assorted meats are tempting. A few chums sit round the table. All is for the best in the best of all possible lunchtimes. And then . … . . then a bloody wasp arrives.
One of the greatest semiconductor CEOs was Tsuyoshi Kawanishi, who was CEO of Toshiba when Toshiba had the finest CMOS process in the world, and who took his company into a process alliance with Siemens Semiconductors and, later, a four-way process and product development co-operation with IBM, Motorola and Siemens. Kawanishi, fortunately as it turned out, has a terrific sense of humour.
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Until the weather turned, it was very good to sit in the garden reading a book wittily entitled iWoz, by a great and generous-hearted man, Steve Wozniak co-founder of Apple.
Yesterday I was waiting to pay for an automatic car park, and noticed the lady in front of me trying to stuff a five pound note into the coin slot of the payment machine.
Xilinx was one of the most lucrative franchises which Memec ever signed. Dick Skipworth, Founder and CEO of Memec, which he grew to be the third largest distributor in the world until it was taken over by Avnet, tells how he bagged up Xilinx. Memec subsequently held the Xilinx franchise for over twenty years.
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There is a famous yarn, told by several Fairchild veterans, about how Fairchild Semiconductor got its first order.