Revitalizing the Chip Startup Environment
Revitalizing the Chip Startup Environment One of today’s biggest Silicon Valley gripes is the evaporation of venture capital (VC) funding for chip startups. Since the dotcom bust, consumer application-driven silicon innovation has been reduced to a relentless chase after Moore’s Law – improving power, cost and speed for incremental multimedia and wireless enhancements in a race down the consumer product generational roadmap to Inventiveness Oblivion.
With 40+ years combined founding and joining startups and working for giant chip and systems companies, the authors have seen Valley booms and “game changer” technologies come and go. Now, though, industry veterans feel Silicon Valley isn’t re-evolving, but dying.
Basketball That Doesn’t Lead to the NBA
High School Kids Learn About Engineering Through Competition and Cooperation
“Something’s clicking.”
The robot has just been freed from its evening resting place, and they’re getting ready for some test runs and further development. As it maneuvers around the benches, it makes the whirring sound characteristic of an electric wheelchair.
Only this time, there’s an extra clicking noise they haven’t heard before. As one of the students pokes around looking for things that might be interfering with the wheels or mechanism, he notices a wire.
“There’s a spare wire. Why do we have a spare wire?”
Abstracting Out
Designing Ourselves Out of a Job
Engineering is a beautiful blend of science and art, discovery and creation, discipline and imagination.
For those who are pure scientists, there is only discovery. The truth is out there, and they seek merely to uncover it. Scientists do not create science. Mathematicians do not make math. These practitioners simply unearth the treasures of truth that were there all along, bringing them to light and casting them in a new understanding.
For those who are artists, there is only creation. Artists seek to communicate ideas and emotions by creating that which has never existed before - either in concept or in realization. Art is about newness and innovation. Art is about humanity and expression.
Someone to Take the Lead
We live in an environment that celebrates innovation and new products. The idea-makes-millionaire story can prove itself out (although more in the breach, quietly, than the noisy observance), and that – as well as the sheer thrill of seeing a vision through to fruition, with money as gravy – powers the numerous technology teams around the world.
But if you’re doing something new, a lot of stars need to align in order for you to achieve success.
Open vs. Closed: A Design Dilemma
Open Design Philosophy Can Affect Both Cost and Reliability
Free and open technologies are certainly charming. They help alleviate the burden of development and allow you and your colleagues to focus on that important phrase, the “value add”: that part of your product that’s truly original.
Linux is the poster child for open software. It’s developed by the community and freely licensed to pretty much anyone who wants it. It’s a great field-leveler, allowing even small companies to develop big products without the big-OS headaches. Well, sort of.
Bridging the Gap
The Real World Meets Innovation At The Avnet Tech Games
In this week’s Fish Fry, I interview Joe Tillison (Technical Director for Avnet Electronics Marketing Americas) about the upcoming Avnet Tech Games. From racing robots to a new game called “Kevin’s High-Tech Home Makeover”, Joe and I sort through the details of the Avnet Tech Games and chat about why the these games aren’t like your average high tech scholarship contests. Also this week, I dig into my mailbag and come up with a sponsorship opportunity for industrious engineers.
Don’t Be Evil
Do Your 2012 New Year’s Resolutions Include Being a Better Designer?
Google’s corporate mission statement famously includes the directive, “Don’t be evil.” We could quibble about whether the company has already violated that commandment, but for the sake of argument let’s assume it’s still in force.
One could also argue that such a rule is unnecessary. Do evildoers glance at that document before embezzling and think, “Drat! I could have swindled the widows and orphans out of millions of dollars, but this accursed mission statement prohibits it!” Perhaps James Bond villains have theirs crossed out. I can imagine a framed document hanging on the paneled wall behind the desk of Ernst Blofeld: “Don’t be evil.”
Understanding the 99%
Engineering Team Teardown
I’m going to throw a hypothesis out there: In any large engineering team, 99% of the work is done by 1% of the engineers.
There, I said it. It’s like the 80/20 rule, but I assert that 80/20 is far too generous for most engineering squads. We can debate whether it’s 85/15, or 90/10, or - heck, I guess the total doesn’t have to be 100. I’d say 90% of the engineering work could be done by 1% of the engineers. 80/20 is just a confusing breakdown of convenience.
What Happens When Your GPS Fails?
You are in the middle of nowhere when your GPS navigation system fails. Of course you no longer have a map in the car. No problem – make a cell-phone call asking for directions. The cell-phone isn’t working either. Is this the start of an alien invasion? Is the world about to end? No, it is the consequence of a minor failure in the satellites that provide the data for your in-car navigation system. These satellites also provide the timing information that co-ordinates the cell-phone base stations. So two separate systems are both affected by the same failure. A nuisance for you, perhaps. But for other GPS users the consequences could be life threatening.
Black Helicopters
The Conspirator, the Victim, and the Flimflam Man
John (a real engineer, but not his real name) sat in his office staring at his workstation monitor. John’s door was closed. It was always closed.
The software company where John and I worked was founded with a great deal of respect for engineering talent. We understood what many companies in our industry did not - that the biggest asset of any technology company is its people. Our campus was designed with that principle in mind. We provided real offices for all of our engineers - with real walls and real wooden doors that locked. Most of the offices also featured large exterior windows with nice views of the campus and the surrounding countryside. Adjacent to each office door was a narrow window between the hallway and the office. This window brought the outside light into the hallway, and also allowed a limited view of the inside of each engineer’s office.
Engineering an Experience
The Legacy of Steve Jobs
In 1976, when Apple Computer was launched, I was in high school. A year later, when the company launched the Apple II - my soul was drawn to the device. For me, it embodied the promise of a new future, where intelligent machines blended functionally and aesthetically into our lives, changing the very meaning of humanity itself. For me, the Apple II was not so much a device as a piece of art and inspiration - a window into the future.
That’s because I was both a hard-core nerd and a sappy teenager at the same time.
Patent Language Serves Its Nefarious Purpose
Bryon Moyer wrote about inscrutable patent language here, and, a few weeks earlier, Kevin Morris wrote about lawyers here. Both gentlemen are right, of course, and they got me to thinking about patents.If you’re a habitué of these pages, you already know my opinion on patents. (And if you’re not, let me bend your ear sometime*.) Along with Bryon and Kevin, I don’t think bad patents can be blamed on the lawyers. “The fault is not in our stars… but in ourselves,” as Shakespeare has Cassius telling Brutus. Don’t blame the weapon; blame the hand that wields it.
(un)Rolling with the Times
A HW engineer and an embedded SW developer, who are slated to work together on a common project, strike up a conversation at the proverbial water cooler.
SW guy (nonchalantly): “Really? I wouldn’t know much about evaluations, I build my own toolchain.”
You Get What You Ask For
Beware the Echo Chamber of Your Own Research
I’m mad at GE.
You know, General Electric. The company that makes jet engines, dishwashers, locomotives, and medical scanners. The company that brought us Jack Welch and The GE Way (not to be confused with The HP Way).
I had a problem with my new GE dishwasher and needed it repaired. So I called the retail store where I bought it and told them my tale of woe. They said they don’t actually service the appliances they sell (no surprise there), but, since they already had all my information, they’d be happy to contact GE on my behalf and set up a service visit. With my permission, they passed along my name and address, model and serial number of the dishwasher, the date of sale, and various other tidbits of information, and promised that an official GE representative would call me to schedule an appointment.
V=IR
Practical Laws for Social Engineering
I am an engineering god.
...a technology savant, an electronic wizard, a mathematical master, an understander of epic proportions... at least as far as my non-technical friends and family members are concerned.
They prove this to me almost on a daily basis - enlisting my help in solving every kind of engineering challenge from pop-tarts that won’t pop to radios that won’t receive to websites that aren’t behaving as expected. And, in most cases, I deliver: “Let’s try plugging in the toaster - now, doesn’t that work better?”