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Vin Dham: A Big Chance for a Seasoned Chip Star His startup, Silicon Spice, has a groundbreaking, reprogrammable processor that could storm the semiconductor industry and the Net Vinod K. Dham could have hewed to a safe course and stayed at Intel Corp. for the rest of his career. But playing it safe has never been his style. Instead, the 16-year Intel veteran -- once a rising star who oversaw development of the original Pentium chip -- jumped ship in 1995 to join tiny NexGen, a PC processor designer that was later bought by Advanced Micro Devices. "Intel can be a very comfortable place," Dham says. "If I hadn't left then, I might never have." He has never looked back. Four years and three jobs after leaving Intel, Dham is now the chairman and CEO of another promising startup -- this one in the red-hot communications-chip business. His company, called Silicon Spice has raised more than $34 million in venture capital from top-drawer firms such as New Enterprise Associates and Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. By early next year, the Mountain View (Calif.) company will deliver its first product, a groundbreaking processor designed specifically for crunching high volumes of voice and data traffic. The chip can be reprogrammed on the fly to perform many different tasks in quick succession. That will allow potential customers such as Cisco Systems or Nortel Networks to more cheaply blend voice and data over the Internet -- and open up inexpensive Internet phone calls to a growing number of consumers.
Silicon Spice is aiming at the same target, and with the aggressive Dham at the helm, it stands a good chance of scoring a hit. Born and raised in India, the 48-year-old CEO has built his life on taking chances. At the age of 25, he left his family in New Delhi to get a graduate degree in the U.S., arriving with just $8 in his pocket. Returning home five years later in search of an arranged marriage, he used a mix of hardball business techniques and American candor to woo a wife: He insisted, for example, on detailing his shortcomings, a risky tactic in tradition-bound India. The match has been a success, he says. His artistic wife has "brought a different flavor to my life," and they have raised two teenage sons. Dham has taken similar risks in his career. After getting a degree in semiconductor technology from the University of Cincinnati in 1977, he spent two years in Dayton, Ohio -- a place he calls "cold and boring" -- at NCR Microelectronics. When Intel came calling, he jumped to what was then a mere $400 million company. By the time Dham left in 1995, Intel's revenues had soared to $16.2 billion. Dham says he learned everything he knows about business studying at knee of "the master," Intel Chairman Andrew Grove. Even at Intel, Dham took chances, such as his prescient decision to work on processors when the company was still mostly a maker of memory chips. "THRILL OF A LIFETIME." Leaving Intel for NexGen was the boldest step of all. Dham had been spearheading the development of Intel's highly anticipated 64-bit "Merced" processor, due out next year. But the prospect of spending a decade on the project left him cold -- even prompting a kind of midlife crisis. "I caught the startup bug," Dham says. "If I didn't do it, I would have always wondered what if..." NexGen, which had fewer than 100 employees, was a bracing change from bureaucratic Intel. "It was total chaos compared to what I was used to -- the thrill of a lifetime," he says. NexGen, though, was too small to succeed on its own, so Dham and founder S. Atiq Raza sold it to Advanced Micro Devices Inc. in 1996. Suddenly, Dham was back in a big company, fighting turf wars and caught in frustrating culture clashes. After 22 months, he bailed out. A headhunter connected him with Silicon Spice, which was founded by three young Massachusetts Institute of Technology grads with a novel chip concept. They had already rounded up $3.3 million in seed funding, and venture capitalists pumped in another $7 million when Dham arrived. Along the way, he had turned down offers to become the CEO of several established companies because, he says, he was looking for a "10x idea -- something that was 10 times better than anything else out there." Dham's wife agreed. "I used her, as always, to clarify my thinking," he says.
That could be a boon for gear that handles many communication channels simultaneously, such as boxes for sending voice calls over the Internet. Dataquest's Donovan says equipment makers will be attracted to the "shape-shifting" ability of Silicon Spice's chip. But Dham isn't the only entrepreneur with this idea: Two other startups, Triscend and Chameleon, are working on similar products. And Donovan cautions that earlier attempts at "reconfigurable" chips for computers have often yielded disappointing results. The risks don't faze Dham. Smooth and charming with a touch of cockiness in public, he's known in the workplace as a tough taskmaster. Just ask Michael Yamamura, vice-president for silicon engineering at startup Siara Systems, which makes technology for moving Net traffic over optical fibers. Yamamura worked for Dham at NexGen and AMD and says the CEO has a gift for inspiring people to devote themselves to the cause. But Yamamura adds: "He's very demanding and really, really tough. With Vin, it's drive, drive, drive, hammer, hammer, hammer." The result, Yamamura says tactfully, "is not always the most pleasant atmosphere." That sounds a lot like Andy Grove's Intel -- long known for its intensity and contentiousness. Indeed, Dham is unreserved in his admiration for Grove, though he claims to be seeking a kinder, gentler culture at Silicon Spice. Kinder or tougher, if Dham achieves anything like Grove's success, we'll all be hearing a lot more about Silicon Spice in the future. Reinhardt covers chips and networking in Silicon Valley. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ |
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 Vinod Dham: CEO of Silicon Spice (Photo: Jamie Tanaka) WEB POINTERS Click here to visit some of the sites mentioned in the story: Silicon Spice Dataquest Triscend Agere SiTera | ||||||||||||
