The Pentium Chronicles: the people, passion, and politics behind Intel's Landmark Chips
By Robert P. Colwell
Wiley-IEEE Press, 2006
ISBN 978-0-471-73617-2
You would imagine that a large company such as Intel would be extremely well organized... yet Bob recalls how the Pentium chip started to be designed in a storage room, the only place where the small group of initial designers could find refuge from interruptions.
The book reads like a technical novel, with organizational detail that will resonate with anyone that has been part of a longer project and the challenges of scaling prototypes to production.
Four project phases
[p.7] Large projects can be outrageously inefficient if not managed properly and might even implode if allowed to stall long enough.
The four major phases I've been able to distill are:
- Concept.
- Refinement.
- Realization.
- Production.
Gratuitous Innovation Considered Harmful
[p.89] Engineers fresh from college...
[p.96] I believe strongly that engineers must think straight and talk straight: tell themselves and their management the truth as best as they can.
Awards, Rewards, and Recognition
[p.99] The difference between getting maximum output from a team and getting only a day's work for a day's pay cannot be overstated. ...
[p.112] Designing at the limits of human intellect is a messy affair and I believe it has to be.
Making hard decisions
[p.126] To choose A is not to choose B. People who try too hard to get both, as a way of avoiding the difficult choice between them, will end up with neither.
LDS Elder Robert D. Hales says "The wrong course of action, vigorously pursued, is preferable to the right course pursued in a weak or vacillating manner."
[p.127] Design is the art of compromise. You cannot have it all. In fact, you cannot have even most of it. The Iron Law of Design says that, at best, you can have a well-executed product that corresponds to a well-conceived vision of technological capability/feasibility and emerging user demand, and that if you strike a better compromise than your competitors, that is as good as it gets. If you forget this law, your design will achieve uniform mediocrity across most of its targets, fail utterly at some of them, and die a well-deserved and unlamented death.
[p.166] If there is one thing I know about the chief architect job, it is that I could not have done it successfully when I was in my twenties. [...] Experience matters, and it cannot be substituted by intelligence, political acumen, or marrying the boss's daughter (not that I've ever tried that one).
In the end, the pattern that makes the most sense to me is this: Find something you are passionate about, and go after it with everything you have. Really apply yourself, holding nothing back, with the aim of achieving excellence, no matter the task, no matter how menial it feels or it may seem to others.
And in closing I would just like to say
[p.168] Hold every project you find yourself in to the highest standards. Expect your team to attain greatness and never settle for less.
As Goethe said, "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."
Why I bought this book
We don't have so many Engineering stories, and this was published by IEEE Press.