"The Pentium Chronicles: The People, Passion, and Politics Behind Intel's Landmark Chips"

Presented by Bob Colwell, author of The Pentium Chronicles

Date: Wednesday, 17 May 2006
Time: 6:30pm - refreshments, 7:00pm - talk
Location: Hewlett Packard (see directions), Pruneridge and Wolfe, Cupertino, Bldg. 48, Oak Room.
Cost: Free and open to all who wish to attend, but membership is only $10/year.

Topic

Author of the book The Pentium Chronicles: The People, Passion, and Politics Behind Intel's Landmark Chips (Wiley, November 2005), Bob will highlight the management and technical breakthroughs, as well as some of the errors made, in the design of Intel's P6 chip, a ground-breaking machine. Some of the many intriguing stories Colwell shares in The Pentium Chronicles include:

• How Intel's runaway success of the late 1990s led to a dangerous "we're so rich we must be good!" attitude.
• Why Intel is, and is not, the sweatshop some say it is.
• How Intel keeps hundred of engineers on-task for 5 years.
• The infamous Led Zeppelin incident and why security guards should only offer to bring coffee at 3 A.M.
• How the author struggled to eliminate Intel's mandatory bag checks.
• How Intel did not steal Digital Equipment Corporation and Cornell University's ideas, but managed to give the impression it did.
• How Intel's team building exercises ran amok.

About the Speaker

Bob Colwell was Intel's chief IA32 microprocessor architect from 1992-2000, and managed the IA32 Architecture group in Intel's Hillsboro, Oregon facility through the P6 and Pentium 4 projects. He was named an Intel Fellow in 1996. Previously, Colwell was a CPU architect at VLIW pioneer Multiflow Computer, a hardware design engineer at workstation vendor Perq Systems, and a member of technical staff at Bell Labs. He has published many technical papers and journal articles, is inventor or co-inventor on 40 patents, and has participated in numerous panel sessions and invited talks. He is the Perspectives editor for IEEE Computer Magazine, and writes the At Random column. He is currently an independent consultant. Colwell holds the BSEE degree from the University of Pittsburgh, and the MSEE and PhD from Carnegie Mellon University.