Remembering Andy Grove - Part 2

One of my most fun memories of talking to Intel pioneer Andy Grove took place in London - and I'm pretty sure it was a the Savoy Hotel - in 1991. He was fun, talkative and willing to participate on whatever creative ideas our photographer had for how he should pose.

I was interviewing him for a popular monthly UK computer magazine called Personal Computer World (the interview was later reprinted in a great book from Wendy M. Grossman called "Remembering the Future: Interviews from Personal Computer World").

Here are a few highlights:

Andrew Grove is not your typical computer industry mogul. Although he
is a co-founder of the largest and most successful microprocessor
company in the world - Intel - and has led the personal computer
industry by the nose for most of the industry's 15-year life, you wouldn't know
it to talk to him.

He greets you with a winning smile, a twinkle in his eye and a manner
which suggests that being president of Intel is just what he does for
a living - and that he really can't wait to get home, slip his shoes
off and relax. Unlike most CEOs of large US computer companies, Grove
does not appear a zealot for PC technology - or even for Intel
itself.

During our interview, he was as comfortable getting into the fairly
outlandish poses suggested by our entrepreneurial photographer as he
was in discussing his then-upcoming keynote speech at Comdex '91 in
Las Vegas.

But behind the easy manner and laid-back style is a self-made man in
the best traditions of American business. Grove was born in Budapest,
Hungary in 1936 and after making his way to the United States
graduated in 1960 from City College of New York with a Bachelor of
Science degree in chemical engineering. He took his Ph.D. at Berkeley
(near San Francisco) and landed his first job at Fairchild
Semiconductor.

And there Grove stayed until he was invited to help found Intel with
Robert M. Noyce and Gordon E. Moore in 1968 - with the goal of
develop a process to allow several thousands of transistors to be
integrated on a single chip of silicon with relatively high
production yields. Shortly after, the first Intel microprocessor was
born.

Since then, Intel has come to dominate the microprocessor industry
with PCs from every major manufacturer (except Apple) basing their
systems around Intel-architecture chips. Over the past two years,
however, Grove is facing increasing challenges to its position."

After that intro, I talked quite a bit about the technology and competitive landscape issues of the day (which were very top-of-mind then - as much as the Xeon processor show below is today).



Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 v4 CPU front view - photo courtesy of Intel

 

 

But the answers that really stand the test of time (and are actually fun to look back on) relate to his take on the future. Here's what he said about the way he thought networks would be used in the future (and remember, this conversation is taking place in late 1991).

The current ratio (of network staff to equipment) is one network
administrator per network. Although this is 'do-able' today, what if
you want to wire up 100 computers? Current average network sizes are
ten computers per network and at that rate it would mean 10 million
network administrators would be needed. It's like when someone in the
in 1940s extrapolated the size of the telephone network would
eventually require everyone who used a telephone to become a long
distance operator (and in the sense that most long distance calls are
now done by direct dialing, they are right).  So we will try to make
network management functions so transparent that administration will
just be one more function in any network application.  

One other interesting insight from Grove came in a question about Microsoft and its role in the PC industry - and his answer reflected the Microsoft's youth at the time.

It (Microsoft) is and has been the most productive developer of system software.
For most of this decade it has been a small company trying to do a
big job. It is not a criticism of Microsoft, but the amount of
resource and development that went into processor development was
not matched by that in systems software - and they are now catching
up.



One observation about this interview - it was one the only interview I ever did with a major technology company CEO that was followed up by a hand-signed note afterwards. When the interview appeared, Andy Grove wrote to me to tell me how much he had enjoyed it. He was a gentleman and a scholar.

More Andy Grove memories soon....