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[Rob <becida AT comcast.net>]

Time for a tvo story... Its been awhile..

FWIW On January 27, 2010, 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_acquisition_by_Oracle>Sun 
was acquired by Oracle Corporation for US$7.4 
billion, based on an agreement signed on April 20, 2009.

Rob
becida AT comcast.net
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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<LYRIS-2407926-4276447-2003.09.26-11.09.59--rob_b9#lycos.com AT listserv.unc.edu>
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 11:08:09 -0700
From: Tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>
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To: "Homestead mailing list" <homestead AT listserv.unc.edu>
Subject: Oh, hell, everyone has sleep apnea, time 
for business success storytelling
 again





China stories, and industry springing up 
overnight from rice paddies and water buffalo paths.

I spent a lot of time with the Chinese 
Nationalists, trained their pilots to fly P-51's 
and B-25's, and of course had a pilot's 
commission in both the U.S. and Chinese Air 
Force. I didn't have a high opinion of Chiang Kai 
Shek because of the endemic corruption---that 
opinion has mellowed with the perspective of 
time---basically he did what he had to do in an 
economy collapsed by the Japanese occupation. At 
least he would fight---Mao Tse Tung ran like a goddamned rabbit.

I was at the time, and for many years thereafter, 
the youngest Group Engineering Officer and Group 
Operations Officer in the U.S. Air Force at age 
22, commanding 400 aircraft and 2800 men four 
years off a dairy farm and with then only a high 
school education, albeit a good one. A highly 
strategic positiion and as much the result of 
luck and the death of better-qualified contemporaries as any innate ability.

With a pretty foggy memory, I am trying to 
reconstruct the military history and many 
photographs for my kids who now see it as a world 
they never knew existed. The foggy memory lifted 
briefly---long ago past posts recounted that I 
flew twenty three types of liaison, pursuit, 
bomber, observation and transport aircraft for 
the U.S. Air Force in WWII. It was actually 
24---I had forgotten about the cursed UC-64, aka 
Noorduyn Norseman in which I accumulated some 800 
hours. It was designed as a Canadian bush 
plane---ten passenger with a 600 hp radial 
engine. The damned thing had zero visibility and 
no dihedral so you had to fly it every minute you 
sat in the pilot's seat. It would take off with 
the cargo space filled with lead, but lead or 
cotton it wouldn't climb over a fifty foot tree a 
mile in front of you. My oldest boy is scanning 
the photos onto a CD. I may post a few when I get a copy.

My friends occupied every position of power in 
the Taiwan Government---most powerful post being 
the head of National Reconstruction, and perhaps 
the next being head of the Chinese Air Force, who 
stayed at my home in Texas when visiting his children in the U.S.

The most spectacular and most rapid bootstrap 
operation the world has ever seen took place in 
Taiwan. By comparison, rebuilding Afghanistan or 
Iraq is a piece of cake. The Japanese left a tiny 
amount of industrial infrastructure, but 
basically rice paddies had to be turned into 
industrial power. Here's how it was done.
Chiang Kai Shek and the Office of National 
Reconstruction seized title to most of the land, 
and paid for it with I.O.U's that had to be 
invested in infant industry to be worth anything 
at all. Canny Taiwanese landowners immediately 
scurried around to see what could be manufactured 
and sold overseas for hard currency, primarily in 
the U.S. market, for U.S. dollars.

A few tiny banks came into being---primarily to 
handle letters of credit with American bank 
affiliates. There was no stock market, no bank 
loans to businessmen, all business investment 
came from individuals---the aforesaid rice paddy 
landowners and street capital from wage earners 
who saved 25% or more of their meager earnings 
and univesally wanted to become employers instead 
of employees, illustrated by the Chinese proverb, 
"better to be the head of a rooster than tail of an ox.".

Tiny shops posted in their front window that they 
needed capital, and what they would pay for it in 
common stock and interest. The wage earners 
strolled in, looked around to assess the business 
prospects, and dug in their loin cloths for 
whatever they could afford to invest in return 
for a piece of paper bearing the owner's 
signature and National I.D. Number. Few of these 
small shops failed, most thrived, and many quickly became industrial giants.

When I lived in Taichung I watched 14,000 
manufacturers spring up there within five years 
in an area where the total population was well 
under a half a million. Completely unfettered 
capitalism (which the U.S. does not have and 
never has known), has enormous growth 
potential---like watching bacteria in a Petrie 
Dish with a 600 power microscope. There's no free 
lunch---unfettered capitalism also contains 
rapidly growing seeds of destruction, and in the 
same five years the water became undrinkable and 
air unbreathable---appalling to see almost 100% 
of the population wearing breathing masks in a 
vain effort to keep poisonous toxins out of their 
lungs. Regulation of uncaring capitalists has 
been imposed and the environment slowly 
improving. Unlike the U.S., Chinese culture did 
not permit the growth of corporate monopoly and 
its attendant abuse of competition, wage earners 
and the economy. In Taiwan general welfare means 
general welfare, not welfare for a tiny top sliver of the population.

I lived in Taiwan during long periods in the 
1980's, and went back and forth like a badminton 
shuttlecock on the always dangerous Northwest 
Airlines aircraft, until safer ones such as Singapore Airlines emerged.

Here's where the generalities end, let us turn to 
specifics---David Lee and Maggie Chen, and 
Hershey Valve Company (which I chose for them as 
having good vibes in the U.S. market, and which 
you will find in every Home Depot and Lowes, most 
U.S. industrial supply distributors today.

At the time I had designed a long line of 
thermoplastic valves, the tooling and testing 
equipment to produce them. I had already 
encountered a highly dishonest supplier against 
whom my partner and I obtained a judgment which, 
with interest is now perhaps $45,000,000. In the 
search for an honest supplier I ran across 
Hwatzee plastic injection molding company (see 
where the Hershey came from?) They had only four 
or five injection molding machines, in as many 
small villages where they could find enough electricity to operate them.

David's parents operated a small number of 
coastal freight vessels---enough to make a 
living, but not to provide any financial help to 
David---their most important contribution was to 
educate him in the essentials of running a small 
business. David had little formal education 
however, and could not speak a word of 
English---essential to doing business in the U.S. 
Maggie had no money, but could speak English as 
well as I can, and both were dead honest, could be trusted with your life.

Like all plastic fabricators in Taiwan at the 
time, they had not the foggiest idea of material 
specification---as far as they knew, PVC was PVC, 
so they bought raw material I described to them 
as "pau pau tah! (Mandarin for bubble gum), which 
distorted beyond belief at operating temperatures as low as 140 degrees F.

Maggie set up a meeting with twenty engineers at 
the Formosa Plastics Company (now in Texas), and 
we spent a full day going over the specifications 
of what we then called Type I, Grade I PVC---it 
now has a specification number which I have 
forgotten. They were technically proficient and 
understood immediately what they were 
told---within a week were producing Type I, Grade 
I PVC, and the Taiwan export valve industry was 
born. Well, a little more was required---the 
Fisher Valve Company in the U.S. owned the only 
patent on unimolded ball valve seals, so I 
patented an easier-operating variant and licensed 
it to Hershey Valve until the Fisher patent 
expired a few years later. Got a few thousand 
dollars which they gladly paid to avoid a patent 
lawsuit, and we were both happy. They relocated 
their crossroad injection machines to the 
industrial park in Taichung, where electricity is 
plentiful and cheap---are still there operating a 
multimillion dollar business..

And now let us shift the spotlight to Chenbro in 
Taiwan. After Hwatzee aka Hershey was well 
established in the international thermoplastic 
valve market, Maggie left Hershey, except as in 
an advisory position and minor stockholder. 
Maggie's husband was an electronics engineer---a 
hell of a good one, and with modest initial 
capital they started making computer components 
such as cases, circuit boards etc.---withing 
three years Maggie had a factory employing almost 
a thousand people and in five years had a net worth of around $50,000,000.

I was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 1985, 
given thirty days to live, and divested myself of 
all assets in 1985 and left the fascinating 
business of starting new businesses. Two 
operations and two series of chemotherapy 
fortuitously got rid of the cancer, but I am now 
paying the price of the chemotherapy in the form 
of myelodysplasia. Don't like the price, but what 
the hell, no one lives forever. This is one of my 
feel-good days---the reason for assuming the role 
of story teller, since no one else is posting much.

Now Maggie's operation could go broke within a 
year or two. Could, I say, she's an enormously 
gifted individual who is fast enough on her feet 
to convert her operation to other processes, 
other products, other markets almost overnight. 
She sure as hell won't go broke, been there, done 
that and won't let it ever happen to her again.

The suddenly resurgent U.S. Sun Microsystems is 
the threat (watch Sun as an investment 
opportunity if they succeed in making circuit 
boards completely obsolete, a bypassed relic of the computer age.)






September 22, 2003
New Sun Microsystems Chip May Unseat the Circuit Board
By JOHN MARKOFF



OUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Sept. 19 — Written off 
lately by the computer industry as a has-been, 
Sun Microsystems may still have a few tricks up its engineers' shirt sleeves.

On Tuesday, Sun researchers plan to report that 
they have discovered a way to transmit data 
inside a computer much more quickly than current 
techniques allow. By placing the edge of one chip 
directly in contact with its neighbor, it may be 
possible to move data 60 to 100 times as fast as the present top speeds.

For the computer industry, the advance — if it 
can be repeated on the assembly line — would be 
truly revolutionary. It would make obsolete the 
traditional circuit board constructed of tiny 
bits of soldered wires between chips, familiar to 
hobbyists who hand-soldered connections when 
assembling Heathkit electronic projects.

"It could represent the end of the printed 
circuit board," said Jim Mitchell, director of 
Sun Laboratories here. "It makes things way, way faster."

Sun, an icon of Silicon Valley, has been losing 
market share and laying off thousands of workers 
as corporate computing customers turn 
increasingly to Microsoft and Intel for their 
software and hardware. Sun is in desperate need 
of a technical advance that can differentiate it from the others.

The new technology is being developed as part of 
a military-financed supercomputer effort. But Sun 
executives said they were seeking ways to find 
commercial uses quickly for a future generation of computer systems.

Sun has not decided whether to license the 
technology to other manufacturers or reserve it 
exclusively for Sun's own systems, Dr. Mitchell 
said. Analysts, though, say they believe that the 
company is moving toward a more liberal technology licensing policy.

"This is a big thought project," said Vernon 
Turner, vice president for global enterprise 
servers at the International Data Corporation, a 
market research firm. "It will give them some 
leadership if they can pull it off."

The recent resignation of Sun's co-founder, 
William Joy, a leading software designer and 
developer of the Java programming language, has 
been seen as evidence that the company is 
struggling to remain innovative. Still, Sun has 
maintained its research spending despite corporate cutbacks.

The new breakthrough is based on an insight by 
Ivan E. Sutherland, a Sun vice president and 
research fellow who is a pioneer of modern 
computing. Dr. Sutherland, 65, was a co-founder 
of Evans & Sutherland, an early maker of 
high-performance computers. He is also the 
inventor of interactive computer graphics.

In a paper to be presented at the Custom 
Integrated Circuits Conference on Tuesday in San 
Jose, Calif., Dr. Sutherland, Robert J. Drost and 
Robert D. Hopkins plan to report that they were 
able to send data at a speed of 21.6 billion bits 
a second between chips in a scaled-down version 
of the new technology. By comparison, an Intel 
Pentium 4 processor, the fastest desktop chip, 
can transmit about 50 billion bits a second. But 
when the technology is used in complete products, 
the researchers say, they expect to reach speeds 
in excess of a trillion bits a second, which 
would be about 100 times the limits of today's technology.

Currently, computer data is moved in and out of 
an integrated circuit through tiny wires soldered 
to the surface at special pads that ring the edge 
of each chip. While the pads are small, they are 
vastly larger than the transistors and wires that make up the chip's circuitry.

A typical gold or aluminum wire might be 25 
microns in width and soldered to a pad that is 
100 microns wide, about the width of a human 
hair. Compared with the internal circuitry, this 
passageway requires relatively large amounts of 
power. Also, the size of the pads and wires 
necessarily limits the number there are to ferry 
information in and out of the circuit.

The new Sun chip has tiny transmitters that are 
only a few microns in width. In addition to 
having many more connecting points, the chip 
should consume far less power. The chip's 
additional channels increase the processing 
speed, like adding lanes to a highway; being able 
to eliminate the pads is another benefit of the 
chip's design, like getting rid of a series of tollbooths.

Chip-to-chip bottlenecks have long been a vexing 
challenge for computer designers, who have 
explored many ways of increasing the overall 
speed of systems that are composed of hundreds of chips.

Other potential technologies have included 
optical lasers and even the idea of quantum 
entanglement of electrons, which holds out the 
possibility of moving huge amounts of data instantaneously.

Transmitting data between chips by placing a 
transmitter next to a receiver, along the lines 
of the Sun design, employs an effect known as 
"capacitive coupling" to send electrical pulses 
at high speed. The idea came to Dr. Sutherland 
when he was visiting Steve Jacobsen, a robotics 
expert based in Utah, who has developed a 
technique for ultraprecise mechanical alignment.

This technique might be applied to connect large 
arrays of ultrasmall transmitters and receivers, Dr. Sutherland decided.

While the concept has yet to be validated fully, 
Sun researchers have already received an 
important vote of confidence from the Defense 
Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Pentagon.

In July, Sun was a surprise winner of a $49.7 
million award from the agency to work on 
supercomputer designs. Cray and I.B.M. also won 
contracts, but Sun was chosen over two 
competitors, Silicon Graphics and Hewlett-Packard.

The choice of Sun surprised many supercomputing 
researchers because both Silicon Graphics and 
Hewlett-Packard have larger supercomputer businesses.

"This is one of those things that could have 
great potential if they can work out the 
details," said William J. Dally, a professor of 
electrical engineering and computer science at 
Stanford University and a consultant for Cray on 
its supercomputer project financed by the Pentagon agency.

The Sun technique could pack hundreds of chips in 
face-to-face checkerboard fashion far more 
densely than is possible today. The technique 
holds out the hope of attaining what had been one 
of Silicon Valley's far-off dreams: a computer 
packaging technique known as wafer-scale integration.

Today, chips are manufactured in wafers that 
contain hundreds of identical circuits. The 
individual chips are cut apart and each chip is 
wired into a separate package. The chips are then 
laid out on printed circuit boards and connected 
to other packages by wires that are thousands of 
times thicker than the chip circuits.

For decades, computer designers have tried to 
figure out how to make computer systems out of 
single large wafers. But designers have stumbled 
over the fact that it is virtually impossible to 
create large wafers that are free of defects.

Now the Sun researchers may have surmounted the 
hurdle with a simple mechanical solution — having 
a bunch of small chips work together with the 
computing properties of a single wafer.

"This is a very novel idea that could give you a 
way to make a very compact computer," said David 
Patterson, a computer scientist at the University 
of California at Berkeley who is a Sun 
consultant. "From the very beginning people have 
been making circuits on wafers and then chopping 
them up and then wiring them back together again."

As a graduate student in the 1970's, Dr. 
Patterson worked on a Pentagon-financed 
wafer-scale integration research project at 
Hughes Aircraft. Even though it was not 
cost-effective, he said, it was one of the few 
successful efforts to build such a computer.

Since then, the industry has tried unsuccessfully 
to commercialize wafer-scale circuits aimed at 
avoiding chip-to-chip communication bottlenecks.

All of them have failed and several have 
collapsed in spectacular fashion. Gene M. Amdahl, 
the designer of I.B.M.'s 360 mainframe computer, 
founded Trilogy Systems in 1980 to build an 
advanced mainframe computer based on wafer-scale 
technology. He was able to raise $279 million 
from computer partners, venture capitalists and a 
public offering, before going under.

Dr. Sutherland acknowledged that Sun has more to 
do before it could determine if its proximity 
communication technology was viable. One issue is 
potential interference between the tiny 
transmitters and receivers. A second issue is 
cooling. As chips are moved closer together the 
challenges in removing heat increase sharply.

At the same time, Sun's computer designers said 
they were optimistic about the technology and 
were eager to consider ways of using it in future Sun computers.

"It's pretty exciting in what it has enabled," 
said Marc Tremblay, a Sun microprocessor 
designer. "As you cross boundaries between chips, 
that's where the pipe has been narrow."

He said that faster chip-to-chip speeds might 
also lead to a rethinking of the internal layout 
of computers in ways that would enhance performance even more.

Dr. Sutherland said that he was uncertain where 
the new technology might be applied first 
commercially, but that there was already great 
interest from the company's computer division.

"The news we hear from product-land is, `We want this yesterday,' " he said.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Home 
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