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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."
The soul-saver strikes again (Karma Free, for your pleasure):
Reg Free Link
is she HOT?
Maybe in 20 years she can design a P75. That will show those corparte giants who is boss.
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.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
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?
keep your pants on boys ... she's kind of cute
vodka, straight up, thank you!
damnit - i really did mean to post as AC ...
Start rolling out the "She is hot" and "I'd like her to play with my joystick" comments.
One more thing, can Slashdot's editors please stop whining about NYT's registration? To read their news for free just for filling in some info seems like a generous trade.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
She?? did this? That is great! I believe this is the first woman I've heard of who has dropped out of school and started a garage-computer company. I'm not being sexist, but it really is the first time I've heard of it.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
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.
Is starting to have an effect! From the article:
Her efforts in reverse-engineering old computers and giving them new life inside modern custom chips has already earned her a cult following among small groups of "retro" personal computer enthusiasts, as well as broad respect among the insular world of the original computer hackers who created the first personal computers three decades ago. (The term "hacker" first referred to people who liked to design and create machines, and only later began to be applied to people who broke into them.)
This column actually notes the distinction between hackers and crackers, well, sort-of... Anyway it sure is refreshing!
Now if only we could come up with different words for good lawyers and bad lawyers. How about Clawyers?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
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.
Yes, I know it's a tiny bit off topic, but I wanted to reinforce something that seemed to be overlooked. In a previous Slashdot article, everyone was wondering how to get kids into tech, and how important it is to push extra (and internal) curricular activities at school. I said that that wasn't necessary, and this story goes to prove it. I gotta say, this is a really interesting read... what I wonder is how much more she could have done if she had gone to college and been an electrical engineering major...
- dshaw
Oh, wrong site.. Sorry.
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
She looks like a conniving elf in the picture. So in Slashdot terms, yes she's hot.
School is only a method of pointing you in the right direction to become educated and if you learned enough they give you a piece of paper that says you have learned stuff. If it weren't for regulations in such areas almost every job could possibly be done by a person who never graduated from high school or college. A person who is motivated enough will learn without the need of school. They can go the the library them self and learn information. They can read stories about how other people did things, they can educate themselves without the need for school.
I would like to think school is more a Map to show you were you can go for success. But just like driving on the road you don't always need a Map common since and some exploring will help you get to your location as well, sometimes (usually) a little longer then normal but sometimes a lot quicker. As well with schooling like driving with a Map if you don't know where you are or where you are going the Map is useless.
That said dropping out of school is still often a bad idea, because while you may get there by chance if you had a better education it will give you at least basic directions to start out on, training people with good research skills and the ability to learn for themselves.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"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.
[NYTimes. You know what that means]
That they're just making shit up?
There is a world of difference, the former is impossible, the latter is trivial.
How is it impossible to be a self-taught chip designer? There are these books like "Principles of CMOS VLSI Design" (Weste, Eshrahian) that are used to TEACH people how do design these chips! Cedra and Smith is another good one for learnin' about transistors and semiconductors.
I'm not saying you can set up a chip-fab in your closet but you can learn all this stuff.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
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*
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.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Maybe Bill Gates should have stayed in school and got a degree. He could have been rich, I tell you!
You do realize that Bill was rich before he founded Microsoft, right? His father is a millionaire.
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!!
I really think that it's worth mentioning Jeri's other much more interesting and complicated project, the C-One. If you think the C64 joystick/computer is amazing, take a look at the C-One and you should be substantially more impressed:
http://c64upgra.de/c-one/
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.
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)
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).
One only need to have been part of one of these mythical "well-funded and well-staffed" corporate teams (or to know someone who has been part of one) to know that the garage-based tech hobbyist is nowhere near extinction. High-power staffing and funds are nothing--NOTHING--next to the power of a real vision. A single person with a great idea and a little know-how can lay waste to any corporate team. Don't get so caught up with the corporate facade that you start to doubt it. Watch how many little companies with great ideas that corporations buy up. They do it so regularly that it hardly makes the news anymore. The real ideas aren't coming out of boardroom discussions.
And remember that IBM was once the indomitable corporate force and Apple and Microsoft were the little start-ups. That's why people who talk about how Linux won't change anything make me laugh. I don't even use Linux, not even a big fan of it, and I know it has yet to make its biggest impact. That's how this stuff works. Give it time. History repeats itself.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
L-edit is a polygon pusher. You are going to be pretty damn persistent to do anything more than a puny digital design in that.
For real digital layout you want to use Astro/Synopsys, Encounter/Cadence, Blast Fusion/Magma or Pinnacle/Sierra (Just maybe). None of these are going to cost you less than a few $100K.
Of cource before you to the point of doing layout you likely want to do synthesis (Although it is not beyond human capability to hand generate netlists). Design Compiler/Synopsys is pretty much the defacto standard but both cadence and magma has credible alternatives.
After layout you want to check your design for timing. To do this you want a Static Timing Analysis tool (Primetime from Synopsys is pretty much the only choice here for sign-off quality, though you might live with what your back-end tool has built in if you feel brave). To feed the STA tool with good data you need to extract the circuit: StarXTRC/Synopsys, Fire & Ice/Cadence, CalibreXRC are the prime contenders.
In addition you might want/need to do:
- Formal verification (To verify your final netlist conforms to your design)
- Rail analysis (To verify your power grid is adequate)
- Thermal analysis (To check your device won't melt of fail due to too high junction temperature)
- Crosstalk analysis (Check for parasitic effects on timing. Required for designs on 0.13um and better)
A complete tools suite for digital design will likely set you back $1000K. Naturally a lot of smaller designhouses will outsource the the implementation, but they will at minimum require simulators (minimum $5000 a seat) and synthesis ($100000 pr. license)
As for fabbing, $500? That would be a mighty sweet deal, even for a shared MPW run. With academic discounts and on an old process you might be able to get a slot on an MPW for $5000. On a reasonably modern process (like 0.18um) a engineering run with 6 prototyping wafers (i.e. not a MPW) will set you back somwhere between $50K to $200K
no her boy friend is also a geek.Joe Torre if you know of him.An Amiga person.I first met Jeri 6 years ago at AmiWest-and no that girl in some of the old pics links to her is a "friend"
Amigian and proud of it!
It appears that it's properly licensed.
Commodore isn't exactly the big juggernaut it was 20 years ago...I'd venture to say that the owner of the brand is not exactly "well lawyered". Rather than aim to shut her down, I think they gladly paid her for the idea in hopes of finally making money off the brand for the first time in ages.
Of all the big names of the past I'd say Commodore is the safest bet on the emulation scene. The other big players 20 years ago? Apple, Atari, IBM, perhaps you could include Tandy and TI in there as well. There are still big companies behind all those brands, and in some cases they have demonstrated a willingness to defend their rights to those brands even if they no longer support those old products.
Jeri's a sharp cookie, she has gotten in on the leading edge of a craze. Those retro joysticks (a lot of them pirate NES knockoffs) are all over the malls this Christmas...it's quite possible they will be a real craze next year. Whether they'll remain popular in the long haul I'm not sure. In any case, the original NY Times article is right, Jeri has all the hallmarks of becoming another Woz or Burell or Dr. Roberts. I'd ventrue to say there'll be more neat stuff to come from here in the future.
Rule #1 of business: It's hard to make a billion bucks without starting with at least a few million (or 10) first.
It takes more than just brains and business sense to make money, it takes capital, and it's hard to get capital without taking smaller amounts of capital and making larger amounts of capital (well, banks are willing to loan you some money, but ironically, only if you have money or assets to back the loan first).
Most people who make a billion dollars in their lifetime start with a base of some wealth to work from. It's not impossible to go from zero, it's just much harder, since you have to get to a few tens of millions first - in other words, you need that many more lucky streaks, brains, business sense, whatever, without any big busts or screwups in the middle.
Ya know Donald Trump? His father was a successful real estate developer in the outer boroughs of New York in the first half of this century. Donald took his fathers business, and had the courage and built the connections needed to take it into Manhattan and pursue bigger projects. In other words, he brought something to the table, but no, he didn't do it all from scratch.
In any case, this is pretty obvious stuff. We can't all leave our children billions of dollars, but you don't need to, to give them the tools to be financial successful. It's not so hard to make and save a few million dollars over the course of your career, by always underspending your earnings, saving money, making smart investments and so on. And giving your children a financially stable platform gives them the opportunity to explore career options and take bigger risks in general, which is a good thing for more than just financial success, it gives you more opportunities to find a career that is rewarding and in tune with your goals in life.
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.
I'm halfway through the responses and haven't yet encountered a single comment about the greatness of this project!
/. disappoints once again.