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Vinod Dham is an
Indian-American Indian Americans or Indo-Americans are citizens of the United States with ancestry from India. The United States Census Bureau uses the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with Native Americans, who have also historically been referred to ...
engineer, entrepreneur and
venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which hav ...
ist. He is known as 'Father of the Pentium Chip' for his contribution to the development of Intel's Pentium micro-processor He is a mentor, advisor and sits on the boards of companies, including startups funded through his India-based fund Indo-US Venture Partners, where he is the founding managing director. Vinod Dham's accomplishment as 'Pentium Engineer' and as an Indian-American technology pioneer from
Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...
was observed at an exhibition on South Asians in National Museum of Natural History at the storied Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., highlighting Indian-Americans who have helped shape America.


Early life

Vinod Dham was born in 1950s in Pune, India. His father was a member of the army civilian department who had moved from
Rawalpindi Rawalpindi ( or ; Urdu, ) is a city in the Punjab province of Pakistan. It is the fourth largest city in Pakistan after Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad, and third largest in Punjab after Lahore and Faisalabad. Rawalpindi is next to Pakistan's ...
,
Punjab, Pakistan Punjab (; , ) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Located in central-eastern region of the country, Punjab is the second-largest province of Pakistan by land area and the largest province by population. It shares land borders with the ...
to
India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
during the
Partition of India The Partition of British India in 1947 was the change of political borders and the division of other assets that accompanied the dissolution of the British Raj in South Asia and the creation of two independent dominions: India and Pakistan. T ...
. Dham graduated with BE degree in Electrical Engineering from Delhi College of Engineering in 1971 at the age of 21. At the age of 25, he left his family in
Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...
, India to study for MS degree in Physics (Solid State) in the US, arriving with just $8 in his pocket. He is married to Sadhana and has two sons. He has three brothers and a sister.


Career

After completing a BE degree in Electrical Engineering in 1971, he joined Delhi-based
semiconductor A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical conductivity value falling between that of a conductor, such as copper, and an insulator, such as glass. Its resistivity falls as its temperature rises; metals behave in the opposite way. ...
manufacturer Continental Devices, one of India's only private silicon semiconductor start-ups at the time which collaborated with Teradyne Semiconductor Company, USA. He was a part of the early team that put together a facility in Delhi and worked there for four years. It was while he worked at this company that his love for semiconductors bloomed. He found it to be a very exciting field because it applied the knowledge he had learned as an Engineer and decided that he needed a deeper understanding of the Physics behind the behavior of the semiconductor devices. In 1975, he left this job and went to
University of Cincinnati The University of Cincinnati (UC or Cincinnati) is a public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio. Founded in 1819 as Cincinnati College, it is the oldest institution of higher education in Cincinnati and has an annual enrollment of over 44, ...
,Global Good Group
/ref> in Ohio to pursue an MS degree in Physics (
Solid-State Solid state, or solid matter, is one of the four fundamental states of matter. Solid state may also refer to: Electronics * Solid-state electronics, circuits built of solid materials * Solid state ionics, study of ionic conductors and their us ...
). After getting MS degree in 1977, he joined NCR Corp in Dayton, Ohio, as an engineer; there he did cutting-edge work in developing advanced non-volatile memories. Joining NCR was not a planned career move though. At the University of Cincinnati when NCR needed help Dham was the student in his class who had worked longest in semi-conductors. His leading-edge work on non-volatile memories helped NCR get a patent in 1985 on mixed dielectric process and non-volatile memory device. He then joined Intel Co. as an engineer, where he led the development of the world-famous Pentium processor. He is called the "Pentium Engineer" for his role in the development of the Pentium Micro-Processor. He is also one of the co-inventors of Intel's first
Flash Memory Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both us ...
Technology (ETOX). He rose to the position of Vice-President of Micro-Processor Group at Intel Co. During a presentation of his work on non-volatile memory for the NCR Microelectronics at an IEEE workshop, he was approached by Intel Co. and in 1979 joined Intel Co. as engineer, where he worked with the non-volatile memory team and was one of the co-inventor of Intel's first flash memory (ETOX). He later moved to the micro-processor division where he honed his skills for leading the Pentium project by working on two earlier generations of micro-processors-Intel's 386 and 486—in various capacities. In the 1980s, PCs had become mainstream tools for productivity enhancement at the workplace. By the time he started the Pentium project, many established and new players, including AIM consortium (led by Apple, IBM and Motorola) and ACE(Advanced Computing Environment) consortium formed in 1991 and led by Compaq, Microsoft, DEC, and MIPS Technologies, and a consortium by Sun MicroSystems (which comprised Sun, Fujitsu, Philips, Tatung and Amdahl) using superior RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) had all begun aggressively working on their big idea for PC industry and these projects seriously threatened Intel's dominance in segment. Dham believes that Intel's ability to 'focus and execute' while maintaining full compatibility of the application with its previous generation micro-processors was the key reason for its success over dozens of these big competitors. In a Business Week cover story on Intel's new processors, Dham was quoted as General Manager of the 586 processor group(586 was the internal name for the project until it was named 'Pentium' at launch). He left Intel Co. in 1995 and joined the startup
NexGen NexGen (Milpitas, California) was a private semiconductor company that designed x86 microprocessors until it was purchased by AMD in 1996. NexGen was a fabless design house that designed its chips but relied on other companies for production. N ...
, which was subsequently acquired by
AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufact ...
. Dham played an instrumental role in the launch of K6 – the "Pentium killer" processor at rival AMD Co. He held the vice president position of AMD's Computation Products Group. He then went on to lead a nascent startup, Silicon Spice in April 1998, which he re-directed to build a VOIP chip and sold it to
Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wirel ...
in 2000.He then launched an incubator NewPath Ventures,where he co-founded companies with an objective of using India's emerging talent in chip design for R&D. He is currently Managing Director and founder of Indo-US Venture Partners, an early stage India focused fund that he founded after NewPath. Dham has over the years been a board member and technical advisor to dozens of private and public companies the worldover. In February 2015, Dham announced his return to entrepreneurship as the co-founder and CEO of Acadgild, an online educational platform he co-founded with India's storied entrepreneur duo-Krishnan Ganesh and Meena Ganesh of Tutorvista fame. Acadgild aims to teach just about anybody, including a Class 10 student;Software Programming that is relevant to today's rapidly evolving digital world. Unlike many existing online courses that rely on videos;Acadgild provides live mentoring and hands-on engagement for building real applications for its students. It will also include building two applications, thus preparing the students for job ready skills and a more effective way for their perspective employers to evaluate them.


Entrepreneurial career


NexGen

When Dham had joined Intel Co., it had $1 million revenue. By the time he left in 1995, Intel's revenues had soared to $16.2 billion. Dham said he was a keen observer of how Andy Grove built strategy and organisation for Intel's success in the micro-processor business. At Intel, Dham made a decision to work on processors when he decided to leave R&D. By the time he quit Intel, his achievements reached a great prominence. It was also the time when entrepreneurial revolution in Silicon Valley was at its peak. He came across a company NexGen, a boutique processor design Co. that was eight years old, and joined as COO. NexGen was the only company that was developing Intel-compatible micro-processors at time. Design Engineering team at NexGen proved itself to be very capable but the company did not have a chip that was bus-compatible with the Pentium, an important functionality that was needed to fit in PC industry dominated by Intel. Dham, with his wide-ranging experience, did changes in NexGen's strategy knowing that NexGen had to license intellectual property (IP) that would piggyback on infrastructure that had already been created by the rest of PC industry and needed access to manufacturing capabilities and advanced technology by partnering with established players for building its chips competitively with Intel's. While looking for right partner for NexGen, Dham discovered that Advance Micro Devices (AMD) Co. was Intel's main competitor in the computer hardware industry but its micro-processor product, K5, that has been positioned to be response to Intel's Pentium Processor, had failed to deliver on its promise. Dham convinced the NexGen management to explore what appeared to be a perfect synergy for merging the two companies-NexGen had a product but no factories and process technology; whereas AMD had a factory and advanced technology but no product! His insights proved right and AMD acquired NexGen's product and process technology for a tidy sum of US$857 million. AMD's next product, K6, was built using NexGen's core technology. For a short while; it was the fastest processor in the world. It was the first time ever anybody beat Intel at its own speed game. The success of K6 was critical from one more angle–microprocessors were pricey and that meant; PCs had to be sold for over $1500. AMD under Dham's leadership of the micro-processor business; priced K6 to create a PC below $1000. AMD's ability to give relevant competition to Intel and create a sub-$1000 PC played a key role in creating a sub $1000 category for the first time. This positioning forced Intel to respond initially with a truncated Pentium under the brand name Celeron.(These days desktop computers priced at less than $300). After spending a year at AMD post-acquisition of NexGen; Dham joined another startup in April 1998– Silicon Spice as CEO and president


Silicon Spice

Dham, who had made a career out of micro-processors, was no longer interested in just chips, which form the guts and brains of PC. Rather, he was preaching a new mantra: communications processors. "The microprocessor business had become less interesting business to me," he said. In his opinion, the Internet was the mother of all
killer application In marketing terminology, a killer application (commonly shortened to killer app) is any computer program or software that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology, such as computer hardware, a video gam ...
s, which could use most computing power if there were no connectivity bottleneck. Anyone who could help unclog this bottleneck, would hold the key to a multi-billion-dollar bounty. "The PC was designed for computing, and not for communication. The micro-processor has gone beyond its use," he said. In other words, hardware is far ahead of the current computing requirements" he said. With demand for communications-related chips then growing at 20% per annum; Dham and Silicon Spice's three MIT Grad Co-Founders; wanted a piece of the pie. Silicon Spice raised more than $34 Million in VC from top-drawer firms-New Enterprise Associates and Kleiner, Perkins; Caufield & Byers. Silicon Spice was initially experimenting using an innovative reconfigurable technology to design chips. It turned out that the chips designed in this fashion lacked the necessary performance and cost to be of much commercial use. Meanwhile;Er. Ing. Dham learnt from dealing with several customers that there was an emerging need for developing chips that could effectively transfer voice over the Internet. Dham explains, "The Internet protocol was being used mainly for data and delivering voice over Internet, which was designed primarily for data transfer and was a tricky problem in terms of technology". Dham re-directed Co.to build this new chip to support VoIP(Voice over Internet Protocol); among the first in world at that time. Silicon Spice's technology was promising.In a little over two years(in August2000); Er.Ing. Dham sold Silicon Spice to Broadcom for a whopping $1.2 billion in an all-stock deal. The deal was Broadcom's largest ever (at the time of acquisition) and its seventh acquisition in the year 2000.Broadcom's former CEO Henry Nicholas said;Silicon Spice's architecture for communications processors; which enables banks of chips to be replaced with a single piece of silicon; is Broadcom's most strategic buy yet and opens a 'multi-billion-dollar' opportunity. "This is kind of the holy grail of carrier-class communication equipment," Nicholas said. "What Silicon Spice has created is a whole new computational element of same significance of what micro-processor was to PC." "One of the biggest lessons I learnt was that it always helps to start defining your product with very early involvement with customers, "said Dham. (Ref: Smart CEO 15 Jan 2011)


Mentor and venture capitalist

In December 2001, Dham made a trip to India where he met several businesses. He was impressed by the success of India's IT industry based on off-shoring of US software development to India and was wondering what it would take to recreate a similar US-India model for hardware and chip design off shoring to India. With seed capital from other venture capitalists in April 2002; he co-founded an incubator New Path Ventures. It invested in Chip and System Design Companies like Telsima (WiMAX chips), Montalvo Systems (low-power chips) and in Silica (chips for multimedia and digital printing processors) and Nevis (secure networking) with development teams in India for markets in U.S. The timing was right, with Silicon Valley looking at reducing expenditure in chip development space. Dham; with his partner, was extremely hands on in helping these Companies in their day-to-day operations. However the experience highlighted that with so much focus on software;India had not yet developed the critical mass of skills for chip design work and speciality software expertise to support the 'offshoring' model. These start ups were subsequently acquired. Having learnt that opportunities for venture backed startups in India will likely revolve more around services required to meet needs of India's growing consumer class, Dham subsequent ly co-founded NEA-a Indo-US Ventures-a cross border India focused fund in Year 2006. Firm was later re-branded Indo-US Venture Partners. Currently; Dham runs IUVP with his two Bengaluru; India-based investment partners. IUVP's focus has been on investing in Indian Co.s across sectors including Mobile Technology, knowledge process outsourcing; Internet; Education and HealthCare.http://rakabroad.in


Philanthropy

Dham and his wife Sadhana are donors to many charities in the US and India. He has been a trustee of the American India Foundation (AIF) since 2001. Former president Bill Clinton serves as the honorary chair. In July 2006; he was named to Board of Directors and was appointed Chair of the Digital Equalizer(DE)Program with a mission to provide underprivileged children in India with the opportunity to enhance their learning through use of digital technology in a scalable and sustainable manner. As Chair of the DE Program, he led the program's strategic direction and growth. He has been actively involved in the fund-raising and was awarded the Visionary Award for his DE work by
Montek Singh Ahluwalia Montek Singh Ahluwalia (born 24 November 1943) is an Indian economist and civil servant who was the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission of India, a position which carried the rank of a Cabinet Minister. He tendered his resignation for t ...
in 2010.


Recognition

In 1993, Dham was named one of the Top 25 Executives in the US Computer Industry. In 1999; he was named one of the top 100 Most Influential Asian Americans of the decade. In 2000,he was appointed to serve on the President's Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders by President Bill Clinton. On 1 January, India's magazine ''
India Today ''India Today'' is a weekly Indian English-language news magazine published by Living Media India Limited. It is the most widely circulated magazine in India, with a readership of close to 8 million. In 2014, ''India Today'' launched a new on ...
'' listed Dham among the Global Indian Achievers. Dham said; the survival instinct is the critical factor underlying the success of Indians in Silicon Valley. Dham was profiled at the Pravasi Bhartiya Diwas in 2007, organised by the Ministry of Overseas Affairs of the government of India, a high recognition for accomplished Indians including
Amar Bose Amar Gopal Bose (November 2, 1929 – July 12, 2013) was an American entrepreneur and academic. An electrical engineer and sound engineer, he was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for over 45 years. He was also the found ...
,
Indra Nooyi Indra Nooyi (née Krishnamurthy; born October 28, 1955) is an Indian-American business executive and former chief executive officer and chairperson of PepsiCo. She has consistently ranked among the world's 100 most powerful women. In 2014, sh ...
,
Vinod Khosla Vinod Khosla (born 28 January 1955) is an Indian-American businessman and venture capitalist. He is a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the founder of Khosla Ventures. Khosla made his wealth from early venture capital investments in areas such ...
, Arun Sarin,
Lakshmi Mittal Lakshmi Niwas Mittal (; born 15 June 1950) is an Indian steel magnate, based in the United Kingdom. He is the Executive Chairman of ArcelorMittal, the world's second largest steelmaking company, as well as Chairman of stainless steel manufacture ...
. Dham was profiled by
India Abroad ''India Abroad'' is a weekly newspaper published from New York City, which focuses on Indian news meant for an Indian American, Indian diaspora and expatriate audience. The publication is known for its annual award ceremony for the "India Abroad P ...
among 50 Most Influential Indian Americans. Dham was also profiled by China Daily BBS along with JC Bose,
Amar Bose Amar Gopal Bose (November 2, 1929 – July 12, 2013) was an American entrepreneur and academic. An electrical engineer and sound engineer, he was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for over 45 years. He was also the found ...
,
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (; ) (19 October 1910 – 21 August 1995) was an Indian-American theoretical physicist who spent his professional life in the United States. He shared the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics with William A. Fowler for ". ...
and others. Scribd profiled Dham amongst great Indians of this Century and contributing today. Dham was awarded the NRI Achievement Award at the NRI Global Summit in Oct 2009 by the NRI institute, a New Delhi-based nonprofit. NRI Institute has a nearly 30-year history of recognizing Pravasi(non-resident) such as
Sam Pitroda Satyanarayan Gangaram Pitroda also known as Sam Pitrod) is an Indian inventor, telecommunication engineer and entrepreneur. He was born in Titlagarh in the eastern Indian state of Odisha to a Gujarati people, Gujarati family. He is popularly ...
, Chairman of India's National Knowledge Commission, Lord Swaraj Paul, British Parliamentarian and Founder of Caparo Group, and Baron Karan Bilimoria of Cobra Beer. Dham was profiled among the first and notable Indian American Achievers by the Asian Pacific American Program established HomeSpun:Smithsonian Indian American Heritage Project, which will chronicle the story of immigrants from India and their descendants in America On 22 April 2011, Dham was given People Choice Award and Special Jury Award in the category of Science and Technology by
Times of India ''The Times of India'', also known by its abbreviation ''TOI'', is an Indian English-language daily newspaper and digital news media owned and managed by The Times Group. It is the third-largest newspaper in India by circulation and largest se ...
Group's 'Light of India Awards'; recognizing Indian achievers abroad. On 13 November 2014, Dham was honored with 'Lifetime Accomplishments Award' by VC Taskforce, a Silicon Valley-based organization boasting 6000 members dedicated to promoting innovation through Venture Community.


Quotes

*"The best thing that happened to me was joining Intel and the best thing that happened to me was leaving Intel." * "Electrons move at the same speed whether at Intel or AMD." * "You know, if you are here in Silicon Valley 10 to 15 years and you have not stepped out and done a startup, there's something wrong with you." * "Speed was God for us when we designed Pentium. All we did was to build the fastest BMW or Lamborghini equivalent of a chip, and you were a hero. Now, its more like building an efficient Prius or a Nano. It may not go very fast but consumes less power. A total paradigm shift has occurred in the chip industry. It is evident with the ARM chips, being used to build new devices. These chips may not run as fast but they can run your iPad or netbook for weeks. That wasn't the case in the 80s and 90s." *"To stay globally competitive the nation must do better at steering its youth toward engineering careers". Vinod Dham is among a growing number of technology executives warning that the U.S. faces an Engineer shortage. *"More and more, Sand Hill Road (a key location for VCs in Silicon Valley) money is moving to India. It's clear India's time has come." *Dham on cell phones usage and its future: "There is nothing except maybe Excel spreadsheets that you can't do on a cell phone. You can do mails, SMS, MMS. You can do photo sharing. You can find the nearest restaurant. You can't do the latter on a laptop. It's a far richer medium. You will see a lot of big screens in the home and a cell phone won't compete with that. But the ubiquitous device that you won't leave home without is the cell phone. In India, when they're fishing, they call back and say how many pounds of fish they caught and when they will be back. That creates a real-time market with buyers."''Venturebeat'', 3 July 2008


References


External links


Real World Tech
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dham, Vinod 1950 births AMD people 20th-century Indian inventors Indian emigrants to the United States Intel people Living people American people of Punjabi descent Engineers from Maharashtra Delhi University alumni Delhi Technological University alumni University of Cincinnati alumni 20th-century Indian engineers Indian computer scientists Scientists from Pune Indian venture capitalists