Andy Grove has died | Hacker News Reader

Andy Grove has died

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1,333 pointssajid166 comments

I'm sorry to hear of his passing. My first job in the Bay Area was working for Intel in Santa Clara, and I worked in the same building that Andy did at the time (Santa Clara 4). It amazed me that he had a cubical (well it had slightly higher walls but was still just a cube.) I have two very influential memories of my time at Intel, the first was when I went to a design update meeting on the 80386 and Andy locked the door to the room at the time the meeting started, a couple of people who should have attended in person were stuck waiting in the hall. The second was that when we had one of our "business update meetings" (which really was a layoff was happening to the people who weren't in the meeting so we called them "BUMmer" meetings sometimes). Andy said that because Intel was losing money the slowest of all semiconductor companies we were by definition the best semiconductor company in the world.

Both of those experiences left me deeply impressed with how focused he was on the path forward. What ever was happening around you didn't matter, it was "Put one foot in front of the other and make progress against the goal now." kind of focus.

Thinking about it and "second sourcing", it is funny how not that long afterwards they used marketing tactics like the 486SX/487SX fiasco to compete with AMD's 386DX. I wonder what would have happened if for example Intel bought Compaq instead back in 1991 (instead of Compaq having to cut R&D for example).

I imagine we would have ended up with even more Smart Array RAID controllers; a truly terrifying dystopian vision.

Unlikely in desktop PCs.

Compaq also made x86 server equipment, which is one of the reasons they were assimilated by Hewlett Packard. Compaq developed the initial versions of the Smart Array RAID controllers, and were working with Intel (amongst others) on the thankfully defunct Intelligent I/O Architecture (I2O) on which the Smart Arrays appear to have been based.

One of the reasons I left Intel for Sun was that Intel had just realized that "lots of people" making x86 chips was a bad thing for their control of the market. There were no less than 6 suppliers of 8086 chips. But with the 80286 and the 80386 it became clear that "owning the processor" so that they could claim a big chunk of the profit on every PC sold was very very important to the company. That strategy, while unpopular with the technical community, worked out very well for Intel.

Andy was a driving force behind that shift, his view that "only the paranoid survive" was that you had to believe everyone was out to get you in order to avoid surprises from your "friends." And as much as I hate to admit it, he was correct in that view.

Yea, I know the history. The point being that Intel buying say Compaq would obviously allow them to claim Compaq's profits instead, and maybe eventually driving all other PC makers out of business (by the low margins) instead of making the same undifferentiable "beige boxes".

I was thinking he meant buying x86 competitors or burying them via patents. Intel both patents and buys patents on plenty of CPU-related tech, esp for x86 compatibility. Alpha and Transmeta CPU's come to mind immediately. Things just kept disappearing until we were down to basically three companies: Intel, AMD, and VIA. AMD had to pay Intel for I.P. with VIA being a niche player running losses despite some good tech.

So, I.P. control from purchases or threats could keep Intel on top of competition for a long time. Worst case was they end up in an oligopoly position where they can still pull huge profits.

Everyone else (ARM etc.) has a monopoly on the ISA or they don't even publish it (NVIDIA etc.) Intel actually makes perhaps the most open commercially significant platform.

Not really. Unlike Intel, ARM licenses their ISA to anyone who's willing to pay. Every single modern iPhone has an entirely in-house Apple implementation of the ARM ISA and they're definitely not the only ones

That's far from true. We've been able to license ARM and MIPS ISA's plus implementations for a long time. They and Intel defend theirs with patents. SPARC, the most open of old ones, could be used without license fees or patent risk at all. You just had to make it ISA compatible then pay a $99 fee. Gaisler has a SPARC CPU and pile of SOC HW under GPL that ASIC proven even on radhard, space applications. Enterprise versions selling for a premium exist from Oracle and Fujitsu.

I'd say Intel is not that open at all given the secrets remaining, patent protections, and lack of competition. POWER is slightly more open with PowerPC embedded implementations. ARM and MIPS are more open since they actively license implementations. The most open is SPARC ISA hands down given every aspect is usable with source available for several CPU's.

POWER is FAR more open than Intel. You can actively license it just the same as ARM (not to say the licensing terms are the same, but the concept is).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPOWER_Foundation

I put it between Intel and ARM because I still didnt know what I got at what price after reading OpenPOWER website. I have that data for ARM, MIPS, and SPARC.

So, what's an OpenPOWER license cost, the royalties if any, and does that come with ASIC-ready implementation?

Well, currently shipped SPARC's volumes are relatively low AFAIK, and ARM and MIPS (now IMG) are in fact monopolies, they just happen to license the ISA & the implementation because they choose to do this. Intel does not choose to let AMD and VIA ship x86 CPUs and in this sense it's less of a monopoly. Of course you could argue that ARM is more open than x86 in some other significant sense; here I think that the PC is a more open platform than perhaps any widely shipped ARM-based system, in terms of the variety of available operating systems and software and the ease of developing such software, especially if said software is to have reasonably wide applicability and long shelf life, and also in terms of the degree of control that any single entity has over the platform.

In general I think that the "vertical disintegration" where you have fabs which are open to everyone making chips integrating cheap IPs, instead of companies with their own fabs, has destroyed "openness" - it used to be the case that you knew exactly what the hardware was doing, and it is now the case that you need to sign a draconian NDA to program most of the components in most chips, and this option is only available to select "partners." x86 is an older product and hence more open than most successful newer products; it was perhaps less open than its competitors at the time, which in part explains why it was more successful than those competitors... (A closed platform is a kind of a high-risk, high-reward game.)

OK. Well, we have to consider that. There's companies making money on the ISA's and implementations. Intel's main business is the ISA and implementation of x86. By that standard, they have quite a huge chunk of a oligiopoly with only 1 real competitor and a niche competitor in low-power space. For ARM, there are at least 10 companies that fully licensed and extended the I.P. plus academics doing their own. Additionally, Intel and AMD extend their own stuff in their semi-custom business whereas I can extend ARM or MIPS myself after licensing it. The PC builds on blackboxes from Intel and AMD plus a few others that differentiate at the board level. Barely a comparison to ARM, MIPS, etc differentiating at SOC and transistor level.

So, Intel is dominant in their ISA, its implementation, and in a profitable way. ARM and MIPS don't come close despite their monopolies on the ISA's themselves.

"x86 is an older product and hence more open than most successful newer products; it was perhaps less open than its competitors at the time, which in part explains why it was more successful than those competitors... "

This is news to me. Far as I knew, it dominated desktop due to backward compatibility and other strategies. It wasn't open in many ways. SPARC and PPC even adopted OpenFirmware while Intel still had closed microcode updates. It's still the least open ISA of the high-sellers.

"In general I think that the "vertical disintegration" where you have fabs which are open to everyone making chips integrating cheap IPs, instead of companies with their own fabs, has destroyed "openness" - it used to be the case that you knew exactly what the hardware was doing, and it is now the case that you need to sign a draconian NDA to program most of the components in most chips"

That I agree with. Fortunately, there's work from companies and academics to change that with actual silicon being prototyped. This will be an uphill battle but is becoming feasible. The main drawback is that the cost of EDA and prototyping means closed I.P. might stay the norm. Only exception is if we can get academics to put key I.P. in public domain as they develop stuff. PCI or USB here, analog stuff there at 45-90nm at least. Make it cheaper.

"Far as I knew, it dominated desktop due to backward compatibility and other strategies. It wasn't open in many ways." - we're agreeing here, I said "it was less open than competitors at the time, which was perhaps one reason for its success." The only part we're disagreeing about is, I think it's more open than newer products (as a part of the general trend of hardware getting more closed.)

I worked on chips which included both ARM and MIPS CPUs; I don't think it makes ARM or MIPS "open" in many of the ways that matter, because, for one, programming those chips without the consent of the company that made them is very problematic both technically and legally. So ARM and MIPS in practice are "open" to select partners who make chips which are in turn "open" to select partners, unlike the PC where you have not only Windows, Linux, BSD etc. but things like MenuetOS and TempleOS and it's both legal and technically feasible to do this kind of thing. Of course this isn't due to Intel or anyone else behind the PC being more benevolent than other vendors, it's just an older platform and closeness wasn't or at least didn't seem as important for profitability as it is today. Here BTW Intel's focus on backward compatibility is very helpful - low-level software for the ARM or MIPS becomes obsolete more quickly and developing working low-level software for newer version of these in a timely manner might require partnering with the vendor, AFAIK. Basically ARM and MIPS are way more open than x86 to me as a chip architect (although an ARM architecture license AFAIK costs $30M or so... meaning that a lot of chip makers ought to take whichever implementation ARM provides and you're at their mercy to a much greater extent than you'd often desire), but they are far from fully open and then they're way less open than x86 to the users.

And then both MIPS and ARM are pretty old... the trend of really closing everything, where you can't get any spec without partnering with the vendor, didn't take off until maybe the 2000s.

I wonder what it'd take for open IPs to gain significant traction in hardware. It's easy to come up with reasons for them to fail or succeed but it's not easy to predict which reasons will end up more dominant.

"I worked on chips which included both ARM and MIPS CPUs"

That's really neat. Especially as I work a little on methods for secure HW/SW design. Mostly done with digital side of ASIC methodology but still custom digital and analog stuff to figure out. Appreciate any tips you have on such threads where I'm exploring.

"So ARM and MIPS in practice are "open" to select partners who make chips which are in turn "open" to select partners, unlike the PC where you have not only Windows, Linux, BSD etc. but things like MenuetOS and TempleOS and it's both legal and technically feasible to do this kind of thing. "

So, back then, ARM and MIPS I.P. holders didn't allow a PC-like product to be built with their chips? It was custom negotiated for every product with no platforms available? I could see you calling that less open and the ecosystem hit it would have.

"I wonder what it'd take for open IPs to gain significant traction in hardware. It's easy to come up with reasons for them to fail or succeed but it's not easy to predict which reasons will end up more dominant."

Inherently safer or language-specific ISA's like jop-design.com or crash-safe.org. Microcontrollers where any royalties are eliminated to further lower costs. OEM's targetting hobbyists and/or idealists that want maximum freedom. Anti-subversion efforts where multinational pride kicks in with an ISA like RISC-V being remixed allows everyone to feel like the owner. Tools or projects for processor design in academia where they just want something to work with and build rather than screwing around with I.P. and legal risk. Wait, that last one already happened and I already named it. ;)

So, given you've done hardware, what do you think of my recommendation that market wanting OSS hardware just build on Gaisler's SPARC products? There's a configurable CPU (Leon3) and substantial I.P. library already GPL'd or licensable. Probably closer to MIPS than ARM in price. There's also a 4-core version. One could put them right in an ASIC with Pi- or Novena-style boards w/ SPARC ecosystem (esp BSD/Linux) leveraged immediately. Alternatively, really my touch, is swapping out SPARC-specific stuff (eg instruction handling) for RISC-V so all the I.P. just magically supports a RISC-V solution. Open I.P. can gradually be developed to replace it, maybe keep using Gaisler's proprietary source where compelling, stuff is 90+% ASIC-proven from start, people can inspect, paid get paid, everyone is happy.

Nowadays there is ARM SBSA which aims to resolve the problems and allow a PC-like product to be built (the main reason such a thing didn't exist before is lack of interest). In the meantime the GPL helps to ensure at least the source code for the drivers for the Linux kernel are revealed.

BTW, notice the "server" in the ARM SBSA name.

Regarding the PC ecosystem vs the ARM and MIPS ecosystem - I'm not sure what happened back when MIPS and ARM made chips, just that most of their volume came when they were IPs, and at that point chip makers were keeping things rather closed. I'm pretty sure both Intel and say MS do not see the PC as the ideal model for their business, they just happen to profit more from it than they would from an attempt to kill it.

Generally, today ARM will sometimes break OS-level code between releases - something Intel would never do - and I think ARM does this because it sells an IP, not chips, and so in any case the only way to sell a CPU to a consumer is through a chip maker licensing ARM and then porting OSes to the new chip - and the chip maker can handle ARM-related breakage while they're at it. But it does not follow that ARM is to blame for most chips being closed and/or hard for an OS unsupported by the chip maker to work on the chip across its various generations; I'd guess that most of the difficulty comes from the chip-level breakage and lack of documentation, not CPU-level issues of this sort.

So IMO it's not that ARM or MIPS actively prevent(ed) the emergence of an open platform like the PC while Intel was pushing for open platforms; it's that Intel happens to have succeeded mainly selling chips for an open platform, while ARM and MIPS happen to have succeeded mainly selling CPU IP for various closed platforms.

Regarding the SPARC IP that you mentioned - I'd have to look at it more deeply to have an informed opinion. Generally for a chip vendor who wants source code, as opposed to wanting an open source IP, MIPS is just fine, they'll give you the source. Otherwise what you want from your CPU vendor varies (ARM for instance gives you not just the CPU but everything you need to build say a cellphone application processor - probably not the best one on the market, but a completely functional one. At the level of the CPU itself, you might want a bunch of things - like hardware virtualization support, or cache coherence with other processors, etc. etc. - that different vendors support differently, if at all.) So as I said, I don't think I have a serious opinion about the product you mention.

I really find it hard to understand what drives these people. Let's say he cornered the entire market and sold 100% of CPUs. What then? Why?

Don't they want the best for the world, and isn't that clearly going to come through competition? I just cannot fathom their motives. Same for any line - fast food chains? Do they want everyone in the world to eat their burger every meal? Why?

I guess I need to buy one of his books to try and find out!

One of the chief arguments for ARM and other MIPS-like ecosystems: they are much more diverse, therefore evolve better on the long run than a tied-down monopoly (Amd used to push Intel on many fronts, ie 64 bits, SIMD, RISC core etc)

btw: Intel isn't a CPU manufacturer. It is a factory for manufacturing processor factories: they are one level of abstraction higher.

> btw: Intel isn't a CPU manufacturer. It is a factory for manufacturing processor factories: they are one level of abstraction higher.

Can you elaborate that a bit? I mean I'm completely ignorant about CPU manufacturing, your statement is very intriguing.

What exactly do they manufacture when you say they manufacture factory of CPUs? Design?

> I just cannot fathom their motives

Maybe start with "swimming in your vault full of money like Scrooge McDuck".

Nah I don't think this is what gets them out of bed every day.

isn't that clearly going to come through competition?

Not if you think you're the best! Consider that: if you are in the position where you think you have by far the best product, then wouldn't you want to share it with everyone? In that case, the competition is working against the world's best interests.

They want their company to continue to exist so they can continue doing what they do. How did it work out for all the other CPU vendors from 1990?

In this case, they were second-sourcing meaning that they were manufacturing Intel's CPU designs.

Go and ask the ghost of Zilog past about competition rewarding the best technology.

If Intel bought out Compaq in 1991 history would be different. I used Compaqs around that time. They had small pizza boxes with 386 and 486 CPUs in them.

I'd imagine Intel would make Compaq PCs with their other chips like the 80980 and other chips.

Maybe make Unix workstations with RISC chips using HP-UX.

> it was "Put one foot in front of the other and make progress against the goal now." kind of focus.

i am finding in my own startup that this is the only way progress is made. you just keep going, if at all possible.

Wow.same, I worked in building 5 in 1997 - I recall "going pee next to Andy many times" - other than this interaction with him I didn't really talk to him much.

I recall asking the question then "why can't we stack cores on top of each other" and being told by very senior engineers how stupid that idea was...

Working at Intel was actually the golden age of my gaming experience; I worked in the game development lab and played video games to test SIMD extensions 18 hours a day.

I recall going out to a balcony in SC5 and having a cigarette, there was some person from finance there, and after chatting with him for a bit I asked why he was working so late; he was trying to figure out how to recode the finance system to add additional spaces to the finance DB to allow for the many billions they had in the bank. Apparently the fields were initially set too short to handle the numbers as large as they were dealing with...

Andy was an incredible person.

As for "going pee next to Andy many times", Szilard was trying to switch from physics to biology and was housing for ideas at Karolinska.

He visited Klein, who happened to follow him to the bathroom and saw blood in the pot after him. As a non practicing doctor, but avid observer, he quickly diagnosed him with cancer. Szilard then signed up for one of the highest doses of radiotherapy in humans. He survived both the therapy and the cancer and lobbied afterwards to set up EMBL (with Viki Weisskopf, patterned after CERN).

He was CEO when I joined. Highly respected guy.

ChuckMcM, with apologies for veering off-topic, you've got so many interesting stories re Intel, Sun, etc. Have you considered writing a book about your experiences? I'd buy it.

> I went to a design update meeting on the 80386

I remember dreaming about a 386 back in the day when I was a kid using a soviet 8086 clone..

It seems so incredible that these things were created by real people.

I always kind of thought that aliens were building these chips .. Still do sometimes.

its probably all those old Intel commercials where it shows alien looking robots creating the chips!

I had the privilege of meeting Andy Grove a few years ago after he expressed interest in learning what our startup was doing to advance medicine. At the time, he was already clearly suffering the physical effects of Parkinsons, but mentally he was completely with it.

He listened without saying a word for ~15 minutes while I explained what our startup does. Then, he began "If I were you, I'd..." and proceeded to tell us specific ways he thought we could better focus our business. His advice was relevant and demonstrated a crisp understanding of our business and many of the challenges we'd face over the next several years.

My natural inclination was to jump in and start pushing back, but I just stop and decided to listen and learn from this business legend. I left extremely impressed. Even today, several years later, we're still executing on many things he foresaw after a brief interaction.

Strange -- about the same timeframe, already with Parkinsons, a flagship neuroscience lab in Oxford also tried to approach him for research money. Without success.

For those who are interested in knowing more about Andy Grove and the early days of Intel, I highly recommend Tedlow's biography. Of all the biographies or business histories I've read, I can't think of one which does a better job of making you feel like you're hanging out with him, hearing his war stories, and getting a real feel for what kind of guy he was and what drove him and his company to success.

http://www.amazon.com/Andy-Grove-Life-Times-American/dp/1591...

Thanks. Just bought a copy.

Are these the same book?

http://www.amazon.com/Andy-Grove-Times-American-Business/dp/...

http://www.amazon.com/Andy-Grove-Life-Times-American/dp/1591...

There doesn't seem to be a Kindle / ePub version, unfortunately.

I'm sure there will be one, now that he passed. At least, I hope it will.

I read this book about Andy Grove and Intel in high-school, made a huge impact in my career choices.

https://www.amazon.ca/Inside-Intel-Worlds-Powerful-Company/d...

Just wanted to mention that in the last several hours, the price of a used hardcover copy of the book on Amazon has gone from $0.01 to $2.93 (which probably represents about 30 copies sold).

Actually kind of incredible to see this sort of inventory change happen in real time.

(I bought the cheapest "very good" condition item for $0.41 + shipping)

It's incredibly cheap in comparison to the UK. Guess there just aren't as many used copies here.

Tedlow did a wonderful Google Talk about his book:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7yqwOI0-SQ

Wow, cool, thanks for sharing this!

Thanks! While we're at it, do you have an opinion on Michael S. Malone's /The Intel Trinity/ http://www.amazon.com/The-Intel-Trinity-Important-Company/dp... ?

Grove's High Output Management is highly recommended. It's a masterpiece of management theory and practice.

http://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp...

I am in the middle of reading HPM, sad to hear. Andy Grove's writing has a lot of the same flavors of Paul Graham, but for a more corporate setting. The no-nonsense attitude towards meetings, and also understanding the challenges of decision making through meetings resonate with me.

I just learned about it and Andy Grove a couple of days ago, which really puts the "oh, this person would be cool to talk to" and the "oh, that's not happening" awkwardly close.

But some view books as a receptacle of the authors mind, a time capsule that allows them to share thoughts with you even centuries after they have passed. Guess I'll have 2 more to look forward to.

I was going through a difficult period at work last year and picked up High Output Management on the recommendation of a thread I came across somewhere here on HN. It didn't help save my job. But it did help me see what competent management looks like and helped me preserve a bit of my sanity.

One thing that struck me as emblematic of Grove's generous and effective management style is that nowhere in the book does he have a section addressing the difficult task of letting people go. I kept waiting for it. Instead, he focuses on the challenge of retaining talent stating that's the toughest job management confronts.

The book made me really wish I worked for an organization he was in charge of.

Ben Horowitz talks about letting people go in The Hard Things About Hard Things. Really a great book in its own right.

I am enjoying reading High Output Management as well. If you like that, you might enjoy this intro to the new version from Ben Horowitz:

http://www.bhorowitz.com/high-output-management

Andy Grove was an immigrant to the US and a political refugee. Worth noting in today's political climate.

Also, an immigrant from a country that was communist and behind the Iron Curtain, from a time when communism and its lands were held in fear and loathing similar to how terrorism and the Middle East are viewed today.

Worth thinking about next time Syrian refugees come up, but I know I'm preaching to the choir here.

PBS did a great documentary "Silicon Valley"[1] (not to be confused with the show), which I highly recommend.

It tells the amazing story of how Robert Noyce, Arthur Rock, Gordon Moore, and Andrew Grove were absolute pioneers and insanely gifted. A huge loss.

Here is the first 15 minutes of the documentary on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcOoQP7nhl4

The effect of Grove's talent was only made obvious when he retired and the company started to drift seriously sideways with their forays into VLIW and stupidly deep instruction pipelines. His ability to steer a company through what was perpetual chaos against relentless competitors is almost unparalleled.

They didn't have it easy like Microsoft did where they were virtually the only game in town. They almost lost their position to AMD on more than one occasion, and were under constant pressure from Motorola, IBM, Sun, MIPS, DEC, and others all intent on capturing a dominant position in the highly lucrative desktop and server markets.

Where hard drive makers would have a few years of glory before burning out or getting folded into another company, and where few CPU manufacturers had the talent to survive more than a decade, Intel not only popularized the CPU, but kept a near strangle-hold on the market for over two decades. They're still number one by a number of key metrics even with the increasing pressure from ARM.

Few companies from the Intel era in the 1970s have survived intact. The only one I can think of is Seagate out of hundreds from that era.

I doubt few will ever measure up to Grove in terms of impact.

>The effect of Grove's talent was only made obvious when he retired and the company started to drift seriously sideways with their forays into VLIW and stupidly deep instruction pipelines.

Not to take anything away from Grove, but a lot of the focus on deep instruction pipelines can probably be traced to certain software partners being concerned about scaling across multi-core.

As for VLIW/Itanium, I expect some of the same motivations were in play--plus, a desire to reset and lock-out the various x86 clone makers.

I'm sure they had the right ideas, but they strayed way too far from the fundamentals.

Remember that in Grove's time Intel was getting clobbered in benchmarks by the DEC Alpha chip and was struggling to keep up with the PowerPC consortium. It was through their relentless pursuit of clock-speed at any cost that they prevailed.

Unfortunately they slammed into the 4GHz barrier earlier and harder than the competition and went into a spiral of confusion for nearly half a decade. Adding more and more stages to their pipelines was the primary strategy for pushing higher and higher clockspeeds.

What saved them in the end was the very pragmatic and practical Pentium III platform, the one introduced a few years before Grove retired, not the outlandish and massively power hungry Pentium 4 architecture.

Grove did seem to keep the company focused on relentless incremental improvement. This is in stark contrast to the later Intel which showed unbelievable hubris with their VLIW effort thinking that people would spontaneously adopt a whole new architecture just because. Maybe they listened to their partner HP way too much as that company is quite clearly utterly clueless.

the very pragmatic and practical Pentium III platform

You mean the Pentium Pro platform? Pentium III is just Pentium Pro with off-package L2 cache and SSE instructions. The P6 microarchitecture kept Intel in business from 1998 (when the P5 line concluded) until the Nehalem architecture launched in 2008.

Technically the Pentium III is just a cleaned up and polished Pentium Pro, it's true. That basic design had a very long run, and is still going if you're going to include products like the Xeon Phi as a direct derivative.

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/xeon/xeon-...

I wouldn't call it dead yet. It's still paying dividends.

Right, I didn't mean to imply that the P6 design was dead. Just that once Nehalem launched in 2008 Intel had another alternative. From 1998 until 2008, the P6 was basically the only workable design Intel had available.

"They didn't have it easy like Microsoft did where they were virtually the only game in town. They almost lost their position to AMD on more than one occasion, and were under constant pressure from Motorola, IBM, Sun, MIPS, DEC, and others all intent on capturing a dominant position in the highly lucrative desktop and server markets."

You're way overstating that. You're whole post, but especially that one, totally ignores the concept of lock-in due to ISA, OS, and library backward compatibility. And first mover advantage, patents, and the Microsoft/Intel partnership. It's amazing how successful a product can be when attempting to clone or ditch it can sink an entire business or its profit margins. And especially if it's cheaper than UNIX/RISC or mainframes on top of that. ;)

Note: I'm an Intel and Windows opponent who can't do shit for specific customers of theirs with legacy apps due to the above. They want benefits of other things but can't switch. I can say same about certain mainframe shops. I'll be able to say same about Oracle/Java and certain cloud shops 10 years from now. I bet you $100.

I hear you, but on the flip side, there are companies out there that don't get locked in. Usually reflects quality of leadership at the very top and a lot of luck.

That's true, too. One has to be devious and effective to create a multi-part, lock-in strategy.

Intel didn't have as many protections as Microsoft did. The attempts to clone Windows, such as the efforts of companies like Parallels and WINE, never came close to being 100% compatible.

AMD managed to navigate a patent minefield and ended up with a 32-bit compatible chip that was basically a drop-in replacement, the user would barely notice the difference unless they went looking for one. The Athlon XP became a serious competitor to Intel's then flagship Pentium series. AMD was also the first to come up with a workable 64-bit IA instruction set that Intel was later forced to adopt because of widespread popularity.

Microsoft has never faced pressures like that. Windows is not something you can simply swap out. Switching from Intel to AMD was simple, your software would hardly notice, but from Windows to another OS has always been a massive headache.

Barely. Intel had a headstart and was default in market. They pulled in more money overall plus charged more for the chips. Gave them big R&D advantage. There were compilers, too.

AMD usually played catch up, usually tot for tat making less money, got ahead big on 64bit Opteron, and then Intel caught up. Today, Intel bough Altera while people talk up Xilinx buying AMD. World of financial difference first mover, IP, and lockin can make, eh?

For an earlier perspective, Here's a 1983 Tom Wolfe essay about Noyce and the founding of Intel, briefly mentioning Andy Grove at the end.

https://web.stanford.edu/class/e145/2007_fall/materials/noyc...

Gordon Moore created Moore's law and Andy Grove made it happen.

Loved this book http://www.amazon.com/Only-Paranoid-Survive-Exploit-Challeng...

Highly recommend Swimming Across - Andy's autobiography of his childhood. The biography Life and Times of an American picks up from there with the first ~50-75 pages recounting the story Andy told in his own words in Swimming Across. Remarkable story - a life well-lived in the face of incredible early challenges to be sure.

What a loss. High Output Management remains one of the finest books on our industry that I have read, and I'm glad we have that to help carry his torch forward.

It may just be a function of my own middle-age, but we seem to be losing more of the old Giants - in politics, arts and commerce, and looking ahead, everyone seems, well, smaller in comparison.

Just as software without silicon to run on is, well, smaller, the software moguls of today can only run on hardware because people like Andy put it underneath them a generation before.

"I strode among giants, friends tell me now, though at the time I felt like a misfit associating with oddballs." - Steve Roper, Camp 4: Recollections of a Yosemite Rockclimber.

Perhaps that is less true of Groves, who came from the lineage of Bell and Shockley. I'm sure it applies to the great technologists of our future.

High Output Management has dramatically improved the culture, communication and output of our company. I live a better life because of what this man learned and passed on. Thanks Mr. Grove, you are a giant.

Your comment just made me go purchase the book. Thanks.

Andy was brilliant and driven. After he retired from Intel, he worked to help find a cure for Parkinson's, from which he suffered. I wish that story had a happier ending but it does demonstrate the fight in him.

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0128/070.html

One of the Valley's founding fathers. May he rest in peace. If you haven't read it: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679762884?keywords=high%20...

Tribute to Andy Grove with Ben Horowitz. Worth watching.

http://a16z.com/2015/09/28/the-man-who-built-silicon-valley-...

Intel was my first job out of college not all that long ago. I met Andy very briefly at an event through the company and was incredibly impressed (and intimidated obviously). My experience of Intel had its ups and downs but I always had the utmost respect for those who came before me and laid tracks for an industry and company that changed the world. The loss of Andy, while inevitable, is profoundly sad.

After reading Only the Paranoid Survive and High Output Management, I have a deep respect for Andy Grove and the work he did to make Intel an enduring company. He'll be missed.

R.I.P

Read his book "Only the Paranoid Survive" many years ago, he fought for cancer before I think, also remember his cubicle and no-reserved parking as mentioned here. What a great man.

One of the only books I've consistently recommended is High Output Management[1] by Andy Grove. His methods for dealing with complex interconnected problems was as brilliant as it was when he wrote it 30+ years ago.

1. http://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp...

RIP. I'm in the process of re-reading High Output Nanagement, which was only one of many contributions Andy Grove made to the world.

Thank you for everything you did.

I have some very distinct memories of my Junior year of high school. One was a trip to San Francisco, which impacted me greatly. I also remember sitting in the summer sun, reading every article I had collected about Sean Fanning and Napster (I gathered all of the relevant tech/lifestyle magazines at the library).

I was already well-aware of the sweeping changes technology was making in the world when I found Only The Paranoid Survive on my uncle's bookshelf. I think it was that book that really hammered home how quickly things were changing, and really astounded me, teaching me a bit about technology, a bit about business and a ton about inspiration and drive.

Whenever I hear Andy's name, I nostalgically return to that summer, a time filed with learning and stretching my perception of things. This news makes me very sad, but also is making me return to that place. I feel lucky to have been around the same time he was.

I'm so sorry to read that Andy Grove has passed away. He was an inspiration at many levels. In addition to his technical and social accomplishments he was a living argument for free immigration into the United States. My deepest respect and condolences to his family.

One of the smartest thinkers and all the greatness, but he was also the person who told Steve Jobs "I don't give a fuck about apple" and Jobs respected that.

I'm ashamed to admit that I'd never heard of Andy Grove until today. I did find a great discussion of High Output Management by Ben Horowitz that may be useful to fellow uninitiates: http://a16z.com/2015/11/13/high-output-management/

Worth watching, contains and interesting an segment about Andy Grove's and Robert Noyce's relationship with each other at Intel. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-07-01/andy-grove...

Interesting words from Andy Grove in 2010. Bonus refutation of Thomas Friedman.

His article on taking on cancer is impressive and an example for all of us: http://www.phoenix5.org/articles/Fortune96Grove.html It is truly worth the read

As a City College engineering school alumn, thank you for your donation. RIP Dr. Grove.

We are living in a such period of time that we see lots of great inventions from great people, how they push technology forward, how they change our daily lives and see how they are leaving us :(

Sorry to hear his passing away. He was an icon in the valley. Intel won't be where it is today without him. He was one of those who brought on the PC revolution.

Working my way through High Output Management. Great Teacher

Sorry to hear he passed away. I'm ashamed to admit I haven't read his books. I intend to write a review under this comment once i'm done.

RIP - having read his memoir, and his management books, I've deep respect for his work and principles that he advocated. He'll be missed

There's been a string of pioneers in the field of computing who have passed recently, but Andy Grove was truly a titan amongst giants.

RIP - reading high output management now. Truly amazing individual.

sorry to hear that. Read his book "Only the Paranoid Survive", When I was in high school, and it inspired me a lot R.I.P

This the immigrant that really made it all possible

Hard nosed, no bullshit fighter. Rest in peace.

Only the Paranoid Survive!! RIP

From Wikipedia,

>Grove's office was an 8-ft by 9-ft cubicle like the other employees, as he disliked separate "mahogany-paneled corner offices." He states, "I've been living in cubicles since 1978 — and it hasn't hurt a whole lot." Preferring this egalitarian atmosphere, he thereby made his work area accessible to anyone who walked by. There were no reserved parking spaces, and Grove parked wherever there was a space.

It seems like early Intel and HP higher ups were more in tune with egalitarianism as well not being aloof or unapproachable. The Moore foundation has been an amazing charity. Here in Santa Cruz, Andy Grove built a house out on one of the streets near the beach between Santa Cruz and Capitola. He worked with neighbors (according to local press) to not be out of place in the design, etc.

Contrast that with Zuckerberg and his recent building issues, or how many modern C-levels want their out of the way offices, etc.

Maybe it was just a different time.

Gates also is known for having built a home that stood out. It's not about the era its about the person.

It is extravagant but hardly stands out. You can only see it by boat if you already know where to look.

I think there used to be some gangly red steel sculpture down by the lake that you could spot. I haven't sailed past there in years, though.

Yeah, but since he's trying to give all his money away, it's kind of a boondoggle of the mid 90's. https://goo.gl/maps/jxsqBmwVBPD2

There was much fan fare over all the technology Bill Gates put into his house. It was interesting to read, especially in the context of home automation these days.

I worked with people who helped Jim Clark with some of his home automation in the early/mid 2000s.

My point in general was I think the Silicon Valley elders of old, Grove, Moore, Packards (I know multiple individuals who benefitted from the Packard Children's fund w/ pre-mes. (sp?), etc. were much more community and outward focused than that which we see today.

There are people here and there, but a lot of what gets glamorized or talked about tend to be more selfishly oriented individuals.

Gates, early on, stated his kids weren't getting a huge part of his fortune, I consider his works on par (via the Gates Foundation) as those of the Packards. That said, the Packards have been very local vs. Gates more international (maybe it's need, size of endowment, etc).

I think this is viewing the past with rose-tinted glasses. I recall the same exact complaints being leveled at the 1980's tech generation.

I'm being selective about comparisons, but it's a matter or proportion, and things then were way more subdued.

Ellison, Jobs (mainly on the woodside mansion and not being charity oriented), Clark, etc certainly contrast with those I mentioned.

I think 80s-90s had seriously strong personalities emerge that get to the core of what you mention. Yet around that was much more down to earth philanthropy, etc.

I don't see that same balance today.

I think it depends on the route they take up the mountain. You can be brilliant or you can be brilliant at taking shortcuts.

The shortcut takers are generally more insecure and that manifests in different behavior once they reach the top.

>My point in general was I think the Silicon Valley elders of old, Grove, Moore, Packards (I know multiple individuals who benefitted from the Packard Children's fund w/ pre-mes. (sp?), etc. were much more community and outward focused than that which we see today.

That is a fascinating observation. I was alive and in the biz back then, but I've burned an awful lot of brain cells between then and now and don't have a particularly objectiv eview of things.

Why do you think folks then were outward focused? Was there less competition so more focus on "doing something really cool", or leftover 60's 'free love' culture, or less shitty traffic in Silicon Valley, or...?

> That said, the Packards have been very local vs. Gates more international (maybe it's need, size of endowment, etc).

Given the international needs are fare more pressing, I'd say the Gates have the right objective.

In 1994 when I lived in Seattle I recall hearing how gates place in Medina was reviled by craftsman as he had hired some of the top of their field to do various things but was too picky. I recall that his entry way to the house was built by some master wood crafter, but gates was not happy with this mans work on several iterations; the guy was basically doing "once-in-a-lifetime" work and gates would have him tear it out and restart... More than twice.

I don't know how true that is, but that was the story at the time.

Other than that, I got a speeding ticket for going 26 in a 25 mph zone very near his house and was super upset at how lame that was.

It's Medina. You got a ticket for being in Medina and not being a resident. The speed was merely incidental.

"Maybe it was just a different time."

Ellison's 200 million dollar house set on 23 acres, suggests that selective memory might be playing a role.

Hah yeah my buddy David who built his yachts said to me that Ellison decided that his $220mm yacht wasn't big enough, so he wanted to sell it for a $400mm yacht...

Now he has a 600mm fucking island of the STATE of Hawaii!!

One must not throw around the term 'volcano lair' loosely, and yet...

I didn't say all. Ellison likes to engage in public endeavors like the America's Cup. One reason Jim Clark wanted Netscape to go public was to cover the cost of his Yacht being built at the time.

There are certainly those that benefitted from the 90s boom that aren't particularly ... humble... in the sense as I mentioned Moore, Grove, Packards, etc.

Or its generational.

Grove was a generation older than Gates, never mind Zuckerberg. His early years were also in wartorn Europe, not USA.

You still can find big execs that control billions of dollars sitting in cubes next to engineers, planners, and admins at Intel. One of my favorite things about working here is how they don't even seem to know it is different. (Intel employee)

Can confirm, once worked next to one of those high ranking execs. He wasn't there often (mostly traveling) but his cube was the same size as mine, a lowly engineer.

Can we get a black bar on top of HN?

RIP

Yes, we definitely need a black bar here. Grove set the tone of a lot of what we take for granted in Silicon Valley, like a meritocracy, no offices for execs, the best idea wins regardless of who suggested it, etc.

Now's a good time to announce the end of the black bar.

Now is possibly the worst time.

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