High School Dropout, Self-Taught Chip Designer

circletimessquare writes "The QVC television shopping network has recently found a hit in its product the C64, which emulates the classic Commodore 64 in a small form factor, a joystick. But the story of the designer of the product is more interesting than the product. Meet Jeri Ellsworth [NYTimes. You know what that means], whose life story emulates the golden age of garage-based computer design. She is proof that the passion of the homebrew electronic hobbyist is still a viable force in an age when well-funded and well-staffed corporate design teams dominate chip design."

Comments

Forgot one key to success

[TrollBridge]

"She is proof that the passion of the homebrew electronic hobbyist is still a viable force in an age when well-funded and well-staffed corporate design teams dominate chip design."

You forgot well-lawyered, for when an uppity innovator dares challenge the corporate status quo. Sadly, all it would take is one lawsuit (ore even the threat thereof) to shut her down.

eureka!

[bLindmOnkey]

It seems as though nostalgia always sells. I went to a local mall recently and there was a stand that was selling something similar to these-it was an N64 shaped controller with a decent collection of SNES games right in the controller. I know if I had money I'd buy it for a young relative to experience the joys of my own childhood. Wouldn't you?

There will always been room for the underdog

[suso]

I was just telling my wife about this last night.
Even when you think that any industry is too hard to break into because there are big companies dominating it, one can still create something that is better or worthwhile to people. Even for the sake that some people want to shop somewhere else, or buy a different brand.

I mean, think about it, for 50 years cars were being made and the corporations that made them became big 800lb gorillas. But then look, here comes Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Geo, Saturn, Lexus, Kia and now Scion.

So there is room, just take a look at the history of open source software.

Re:There will always been room for the underdog

[acomj]

Cars are a bad metaphore. Mostly made by large comglomerates.

Lexus and Scion are made by Toyota.
Saturn made be General Motors,
Geo, was GM rebrand of cars made by Toyota I beleive
Subaru - Fuju Heavy Industries
Kia is from Huyndi (large comglomerate.)

But your right, software/computers are still places were an individual can make it with hard work and good design.

Also she is working for a NJ toy manufacturer not out on her own.

Let us hope

[boodaman]

Let us hope there are many more people just like her here in America. If there are, the future will be very interesting. If there aren't, we'll find ourselves a nation of passive consumers without any initiative.

impossible?

[i41Overlord]

"She is NOT a self-taught CHIP DESIGNER. She is a self-taught FPGA programmer. There is a world of difference, the former is impossible, the latter is trivial."

Impossible? What about the guys who invented the first chips? Did they go to some class that taught how to build chips which will be invented in the future?

You can buy the same books that they have at schools. You can learn the same things on your own that you'd learn in schools. Some people (such as myself) are tinkerers, and we learn better by experimenting on our own than we do sitting in a classroom.

I find it funny that I've also heard people saying you need to go to school to be a programmer or work in the computer industry. Most of us geeks know that's also false.

Re:impossible?

[harrkev]

The Xilinx Spartan family has some very nice FPGAs clocking in at well under $10 right now. So, for small low-speed things like this, they are perfect!

And as far as the "all this girl had to do" line, no way. All she had to do was:

1) Implement a 6502 processor. There is a free core or two floating around, which she likely used. Still not exactly trivial, though.

2) Reverse-engineer and implement the DRAM circuitry. The design does not use DRAM, but you still need to emulate certain portions of the hardware for timing reasons. When DRAM refreshes, the processor has to snooze.

3) Reverse-engineer and implement the SID sound chip. Fairly major headache.

4) Reverse-engineer and implement the video circuitry. Major headache. This system even had hardware sprites.

5) Reverse-engineer and implement the different hardware ports.

6) Include a bridge that would allow a PC keyboard to emulate a C64 keyboard.

7) Emulate a cassette drive and load it with warez.

8) Implement the analog bits of the video and sound circuitry. Maybe somebody else did this.

In short, I am impressed.

I have been through an ASIC tape-out. It costs in the neighborhood of $100K. MUCH cheaper to go with a cheap FPGA and serial-EEPROM for stuff like this. Once you get well over 10,000 units shipped, it is time to start looking at an ASIC. Until then, a cheap FPGA is probably your best bet.

Re:just think

[Spy der Mann]

Just think what Ms. Ellsworth could have achieved with a proper education.

Maybe not as much... she might have ended up as the employee of some big computer company designing games or the like.

Maybe it was the *lack* of education that put her in the difficult situations that made her give the best from herself. It was her efforts to go against the tides that made her outstand from the average geeks like us. Maybe that was the pressure needed to turn her into a full-fledged diamond.

I wish i had her courage to go against the tides and established principles. *Sighs*

Re:Yeah But

[hrieke]

Intel hired knitters for wiring the first set of chips back in the day.
Cobol was designed by a Grace Murray Hopper.
Frances Elizabeth Snyder Holberton was involved in Fortran's development.
Ada Lovelace wrote first program to calculate Bernouli numbers.

If you're going to troll, learn how to troll right.

Finally someone I can relate too

[jdjdac]

Being a graduating electrical engineer, ham radio operator, and of the female persuasion....IT IS ABOUT FREAKING TIME I've had someone to truly look up to in terms of technical skill and passion. Her life story is very similar to how I grew up and how I experimented with electronics other 'boys toys.' I always felt like an outcast for enjoying tinkering, be it with trebuchets or radios.

It really makes you question your role in society...especially when it seems that women are portrayed like idiots or dumb blondes in the media. Or that all I should care about is makeup, clothes, and hair (trust me I'm not that obsessed - just ask my husband). Sometimes even today I ask myself "what they hell am I doing?" "Why didn't I do elementary ed like every girl I know?" It is still something I struggle with even today.

I always wished I could have had another woman to look up and admire for their technical achievements. I almost never thought it would happen in my lifetime. Congratulations to her on her long list of achievements, and hopefully she can encourage another generation of woman to get into tech....especially engineering!!

Re:Yes but...

[Junior J. Junior III]

Even more remarkable than a hot girl designing microchips, is the fact that QVC is selling something I would actually buy.

Re:Don't Need School to be Educated.

[Zebano]

"I never let my schooling interfere with my education"

-Mark Twain

I'll venture a guess:

[seanadams.com]

Just think what Ms. Ellsworth could have achieved with a proper education.

MUCH LESS

For the really creative problem solver types like her, school is a dangerous reconditioning of one's mind and social outlook. If you're not suited for it, excessive schooling/socialization can kill both your entrepreneurial spirit and your creative talent.

It is NOT ironic in the slightest that so many great innovators were drop-outs.

Re:NO way

[taniwha]

I built hardware as a ham at school (back when micros were still becominbg available) - I did do a CS degree that inclued exactly 0 hardware/electronics (but I'd been programming for years before I hit college anyway). I worked doing OS stuff (porting unix) thru the 80s and hacking hardware (pals and the like) in my own time - from which I fell into doing architectural design of 2d graphics hardware (pulling apart people graphics libraries and figuring out how to make hardware to do the same things - specing datapaths and state machines for others to build and making C level models of how it should work - that chip grossed $120M) eventually it became easier for me to code in verilog rather than C and cut out the middle man, around the same time I started running Synopsis on my own designs and a while later driving a router and back end timing on them too and doing the occasional hand edit to polygons to fix timing problems.

You get the idea - it is possible to be self taught - you just have to be smart and work hard - certainly coming in from the architecture side has really helped me - I understand stuff about the software side the hardware guys don't (and vice-versa) I get to sit on both sides of the fence - more recently I've made a deliberate decision to move back to the software side of the biz - for me at least there's more day to day creative work to do on the software side of the house (vlsi tends to be one month of creative design and 11 months of grind making it work - not as much fun as coding up something new every day)

Re:NO way

[metroid composite]

The good thing from this story is that I hope employers will open their ears and eyes to the fact that university is USELESS to form engineers when the drive is not there, and that university is just a replacement for forced military service.

I'm not sure what University you attended, but the purpose of a university degree is to teach you how to think and research, and to give a broad view of of a field. It's easy enough to be a self-taught programmer without having touched object oriented programming, for instance. Engineering and Software Engineering teach building processes that tend to be robust and have a lot of checks along the way. Sure, if you're good you either come up with your own checks, or maybe you just read a programming style manual from cover to cover and get all the info anyway.

Point is, University students shouldn't have holes in their knowledge, and should be forced to do creative thought (yeah, there's sucky universities out there, but that's an asside). There's obviously people who learn to think on their own, and people who can get all the info they need for one area of programming or FPGA or whatever, so it's not useful for everyone, just a lot of people. On the other hand, military service teaches a less relevant kind of knowledge (for programmers) and values obedience over independent thought. It's really not the same thing at all (though this may depend on the university I suppose).

Re:Don't Need School to be Educated.

[Lumpy]

I found that college was more of an atmosphere and an enabler to follow studies. college is a way to make it easier for you to not have to work to feed and house yourself and focus on learning and discovering instead of focusing on survival.

Some people are forced to do both, the full time student that also worked full time commands much more respect from everyone than the guy that daddy had enough money to pay for everything or the person that was lucky enough to receive a full ride.

College enables you by providing resources that normally you would have to pay for... it's hard to study Chemistry on your own because the first step is to build a lab.

Those are the ONLY advantages to college. you can learn EVERYTHING they teach in a college without ever setting foot in one or ever listening to a "professor".

You do not receive a better education at a college, you receive a better opportunity to learn in an atmosphere that is conducive to learning.

Re:NO way

[hazem]

This woman has something that so many engineers are lacking, and that's a focus on what she can accopmlish.

So many engineers focus on what can't be done, how it's impossible, or how it can't be done with tools/budget available.

I'd be much more inclined to hire her because she has shown that she has drive, motivation, and a can-do attitude. Those traits easily overcome years of education.

I can give her education, but there's no way I can give her those other things.

Sexism

[believekevin]

I'm halfway through the responses and haven't yet encountered a single comment about the greatness of this project!

/. disappoints once again.