Silicon Genesis, an inspiring walk down the semiconductor memory lane

Some people prefer to let bygones be bygones, and move forward. Maybe they are naturally motivated or perhaps they prefer to follow their own direction. On the other hand, others such as myself, enjoy taking an occasional trip down memory lane and pay homage to some of the great achievements accomplished by previous generations in the semiconductor world. Not only do their achievements serve as inspiration, but they also put into perspective where the industry has been and where it might be going. For people who enjoy history and have a particular affinity for semiconductors, there exists a great web-site appropriately titled "Silicon Genesis: An Oral History of Semiconductor Technology."

The project was inspired by Rob Walker, co-founder of LSI Logic Corp. (1981), who has been involved in the semiconductor industry since the early days through a variety of past engineering positions at Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel. Over the last couple of decades he has been working as a consultant and currently owns his own firm, Walker Research Associates, which specializes in business development for emerging technology companies. He has also authored a book titled "Silicon Destiny: The Story of Application Specific Integrated Circuits and LSI Logic Corporation", which very much served as a prelude to this project. The project is currently being hosted at Stanford University and the video count is quickly approaching seventy.  The interviews feature some of the famous semiconductor and computing pioneers including Gordon Moore, John Hennessy, and many others. One great thing about the project is that the videos are completely un-edited from the originals and often time contain glimpses into more personal moments of these individuals, moments that these days would be cut from most documentaries in favor of commercials. A gem in the collection is the 180 minute long documentary titled "The Fairchild Chronicles." It combines excerpts from many of the available video clips to tell the 29 year story of Fairchild Semiconductor from when it was found in 1957 until it was sold to National Semiconductor in 1986. The availability of transcripts for each of the videos is another nice touch, in case one needs to search for a specific moment or obtain a particular quote.

Even with all of the nice features, the actual project site leaves a lot to be desired. The browsing of the videos is rather primitive; links are all placed on a single page in alphabetical order with short descriptions which often time tell one little about the actual content of the interview. This approach will surely become unmanageable as the number of videos increases. There also seems to be no key word search, so you are forced to dig through the individual transcripts. While the project information page does provide a link to search digitally streamed videos, at present that link seems to be broken. Another major gripe is the low video resolution which is unsuitable for full-screen viewing. Additionally, you may also need some good speakers, for the audio volume is quite low in some videos. It would be nice for the project to allow users to tag videos and to at least leave comments and opinions to make it a little bit more interactive - in other words to update the site features to accommodate the modern web surfer’s social and visual demands, as is nicely exemplified by the Computer History Museum and their YouTube integration.