In the rarefied atmosphere that surrounds chip development, Vinod Dham is a star. Few other executives can claim to have played roles in seminal microprocessors for two different companies - Intel Corp.'s Pentium processor and Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s K6 chip. But months after helping AMD regain its reputation as Intel's primary competition, this star is now floating free. The Sunnyvale chip maker announced on Nov. 13, 97 that Vinod Dham, a 46-year old native of India, has abruptly resigned as group vice president.
The announcement fueled wide spread speculation and Vinod had never fit in fully at AMD-which gained his expertise by acquiring his previous employer, Nexgen Inc. Vinod's departure also sets up the tantalizing prospect that he could lend instant credibility to whoever hires him next.
Although Vinod did not work on the actual chip design at AMD, he was given much of the credit for ensuring that AMD's K6 processor was delivered on time and met the criteria of being "manufacturable," two areas where AMD's predecessor product, the K5, fell short. AMD has had trouble manufacturing K6 as well, but those problems relate to its manufacturing process not the chip design.
Vinod's departures from Intel and AMD were-by all accounts-voluntary. But his hard-charging style led him to ruffle some feathers at chummy AMD. Vinod acknowledges that the atmosphere at AMD and Intel were vastly different, and the differences weren't always to his liking.
"The job in getting the K6 out was harder in many ways than in developing Pentium," he noted. "At Intel I was very familial with the culture, but at AMD I was not only trying to get the chip, but we were also struggling to adapt to a new culture, where things were sometimes very different.
Nevertheless, Vinod says he left AMD for different reasons entirely. His explanation is strikingly similar to the one he offered at the time of his high-profile departure from Intel in 1995. "My job at Intel was finished," Vinod said then. The Pentium is done. Emotionally, this was a hard decision to make. At a small company, you get to do a lot more and have a lot more impact."
"My job at AMD is finished," Vinod said after the AMD announcement. But at this point, he's not certain what his next step will be. "I joined Nexgen because this is Silicon Valley and I didn't want my career to end without ever having had experience (in a start-up). I didn't want to retire and wonder what might have happened," he added.
For his part, Vinod said only that it was time for a change.
"When I left Intel to join Nexgen, it was mainly to experience working with a start-up," Vinod said. "Well, six months later, Nexgen was acquired by AMD, and I was working with a large company again. Now I want to take a couple of months off to explore my options and figure out what I want to do next."
His options probably won't be limited. "I already have tons of offers," he noted, "and I won't be leaving semiconductors. There's still plenty of opportunities in the microprocessor market. I just have to decide which one's is the right one."
A True Success Story - From $10 to a Millionaire
It's almost a Horatio Alger story as written by Salman Rushdie - an engineering scholar in India wins a scholarship to the University of Cincinnati in 1975, arriving with just $10 in his pocket.
Driven by a strong work ethic and a severe dislike for snow, he ultimately proves instrumental in bringing some of the most critical products in Silicon Valley's history to market.
The hard work started when he was struggling to survive as a student and a teaching assistant, while holding down another job to augment that initial $10. The struggle continued until 1977, when he joined the then - Dayton, Ohio based National Cash Register to work in the company's memory design group.
The snow played its part when Intel, impressed by a paper Vinod presented at a Monterey conference on re-programmable memory, offered him a job in sunny California.
"I had never seen snow before," Vinod said of his sojourn in Ohio. "When it first started falling I ran out and started playing in it like a little kid."
He also got sick, and made his mind up about snow. "I hate it. I learned while it looks good on post cards, it's no fun to live in it."
After moving west, Vinod got credit as a co-inventor of Intel's flash memory cell and in 1989 launched the Pentium development project. Vinod worked for 16 years at Intel, and held the titles of vice-president of the-microprocessor products group and general manager of the Pentium processor division.
Vinod Dham obtained his bachelor's degree in electronics from Delhi University, India in 1971; and a master's in solid-state electronics from the University of Cincinnati in 1977. Vinod now lives in a palatial house in the Silicon Valley with his wife Sadhana and two sons, Ankush, 14 and Rajeev, 12.
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