Abstract of the Commemorative lecture
MY LIFE IN SILICON VALLEY: BRINGING NEW PRODUCTS INTO THE WORLD
I grew up in Italy. Ever since I can remember, I have been fascinated by machines, airplanes in particular. I wanted to become a pilot. By the age of 12, I designed and built my first flying model plane. Creating model planes became a passion that led me to choose a technical education. In 1961, at the age of 19, working for Olivetti, I designed most of a small digital computer, and I led a team of four technicians that successfully built it.
My desire to gain more depth of understanding brought me to study Physics at the University of Padua (Italy), where I received a Coctorate in Physics, summa cum laude, in 1965. A chance work trip to Silicon Valley in 1966 opened up a new world to me, a world I wanted to be a part of The opportunity to permanently settle in Silicon Valley came in 1968. Working for Fairchild Semiconductor in their famous R&D Laboratories in Palo Alto, California, I led the development of the Silicon Gate Technology, a new advanced fabrication method for MOS integrated circuits (IC), that heralded the LSI (large scale integration) era.
I joined Intel in 1970 to lead the design effort of the world's first microprocessor, the 4004, and over the following five years I led or supervised the design of more than two dozen commercial IC's including the 8080 microprocessor, the product which greatly stimulated the growth of the emerging microprocessor market.
I caught the entrepreneur bug in 1974 D a typical illness in Silicon Valley D and I co-founded Zilog, a company entirely dedicated to microprocessors. I conceived Zilog's first product, the Z80 microprocessor, which became a best seller. Introduced in 1976 it is still in high volume production today. Zilog played a vital role the early years of the microprocessor, and as CEO of Zilog, I learned the difficult lessons of running a company in a highly competitive business.
During the following seventeen years I co-founded and was the CEO of two other companies, Cygnet Technologies and Synaptics. At Cygnet, in early 1984, we introduced an intelligent phone that, connected to a personal computer, allowed the PC to become a voice and data workstation. Synaptics, started in 1986, is dedicated to the development and commercialization of human to computer interface products, based on giving the computer the ability to recognize sensory inputs D touch, hearing and sight. In 1995 Synaptics introduced the touchpad, a new type of pointing device that, just like the skin of the computer, senses the position of a finger in a sensing surface. The touchpad has been very successful, and the company has grown rapidly and is quite successful.
Understanding how the brain works has been one of my personal interests since the mid-80s. In particular, I am fascinated by the question of how consciousness can emerge from the operation of a complex machine. To this question I dedicate much of the spare time I have. I believe that our search to learn how to make a machine intelligent will naturally lead us to deepen our understanding of our human nature, learning what are the unique properties that make us human, and what is our role in this wondrous universe. I wouldn't be surprised if in due time we will discover that we all possess a deep spiritual dimension connecting us to the purpose of the Cosmos.
