Video Game and Computer Technology Interaction

It's fascinating to see the evolution in the relationship of video game technology to computer technology. The original Consumer Pong used an N-channel IC that ran at 3.5 MHz that was the highest performance integrated circuit used in a consumer device at that time. In the ’70 the demand for high performance semiconductors and processing power used in video games helped drive the semiconductor business.

Later the demand for realistic graphics created a market for graphics chips. When at Apple, I was asked to attend the IEEE Computer Elements Workshop. In the ‘80’s the conference was primarily mainframe hardware engineers. They were kind enough to invite this little kid from the West Coast. I learned something from that workshop about measuring the performance of a computer.

Performance is useful work over a period of time. What is useful work? It’s what computer performance testing programs called benchmarks measure. But they are last year's workload. The best designers of computers need to know what the next important applications are going to be and that is part of what is discussed at these workshops. The workshop is a small affair where the designers meet and discuss next generation computing.

At one of these workshops there was a lot of tension between the big ECL mainframe boys and us CMOS guys. I remember one workshop session after dinner and drinks. Bob Glorioso, Andy Beckbeshiem from Sun and I were on a panel, saying that these mainframe guys were dinosaurs. They were in the La Brae Tar Pits and didn’t know that they were going to die, and us CMOS guys are going to take over. We were being a little bit outrageous, but we got some real fire from these guys. I remember even getting pitched at one of these workshops by one of the mainframe guys at lunch to get us to try to use an ECL thermal conduction module. Have you ever seen one of these: bricks of steel with water-cooling, you've got to be kidding me. And really, if you look at the technology, the lithography and the speed of CMOS eventually scaling Moore’s Law, just took over.

I had learned from Ivan Sutherland how hard it is for engineers to take on a new technology. That was part of the resistance to CMOS. It's sad, but most engineers don't want to get out of their comfort zone. I tried to build tools inside of Apple to get the engineers better at chip design. Ivan Sutherland had done this when he was at Evans & Sutherland, after they invested in a startup semiconductor company named VLSI Technology. VLSI Technology offered training in chip design so the circuit designers could design their own custom chips. Evans & Sutherland offered the course for their engineers but few wanted to take it. It's very rare to find an engineer that's willing to go in front of a terminal and learn something new, because when you are first learning it, you're bad at it. And you're used to being very skilled at your craft, and now you are just a beginner.