The Race For A New Game Machine:. David Shippy

sum when they left the company. One result of this change was that many of those long-term employees no longer felt obliged to hang in there for that payout during their golden years; they could take their money (what little was offered) and run. And many did. It was, after all, a boom time in the high-tech industry. However, Pam’s gamble on one of the dot-com startup companies wasn’t altogether a pleasant experience, and she quickly accepted when STI called her home to IBM. In late 2001, Chekib Akrout rehired Pam to manage the Design Center’s business operations, including all the finances, staffing, and personnel issues. Even during the darkest of days in the Design Center, Pam would always say she was glad she had come back. She tried to encourage the team and to help them work through any problems they encountered. She knew from experience that the grass is not always greener on the other side.

      Almost from day one, Keryn Mills was the project manager, responsible for the entire schedule for the design, test, and manufacture of the chips. Keryn had been with IBM for more than thirty-five years and was a formidable force, running “her” projects with an iron fist. She was like a dog on a bone. Nothing could shake her loose from something she believed in, even if it was at the expense of the morale of the team. She worked an unbelievable number of hours, often going home only for a few short hours of sleep. She was famous for her successful projects, and many executives and managers respected and trusted her, and listened to her opinions. The trick was to know when to turn her loose and when to rein her in. Most of the technical team dreaded being in her spotlight, and managers tried to shield them from her wrath. It wasn’t always easy to stay on her good side.

      Over time, the team of engineers I shared with Mickie, who worked on the PowerPC core, continued to grow, expanding into a huge team justified only by the fact that we were starting our design from scratch instead of doing a derivative design based on an existing IBM microprocessor. At our home base in Austin, there were approximately twenty partners from Sony, eighty from Toshiba, and more than a hundred from IBM. The remaining IBMers were scattered across seven sites worldwide, including Raleigh, North Carolina; Rochester, Minnesota; Yorktown, New York; Endicott, New York; Boebligen, Germany; San Jose, California; and Burlington, Vermont.

      CHAPTER 3

      Know Your Competition

      It is competition that drives us to higher levels of excellence and, therefore, to more opportunity. An accurate assessment of our competition’s capabilities is what enables us to refine the boundaries of our bold vision. We must make sure we shoot high enough.

      JIM KAHLE, CHEKIB AKROUT, AND I relaxed on Kahle’s deck. A spectacular peach and purple sunset clung to the sky over the Texas Hill Country beyond Lake Austin. Just for a moment, the conversation lulled, got whisper quiet. Hummingbirds darted in and out of colorful flower beds, ruby throats glistening in the last of the sunlight. Bees buzzed in the trumpet vine. Heavy summer air and the sweet smell of gardenias wafted over us. I tipped back in my chair, propped my feet on the deck’s sun-weathered railing, and watched as a lone water-skier carved out one rooster tail after another on the placid lake below. Contentment flowed over me like warm honey…or maybe it was the Scotch. Very old, very good, single malt. Kahle’s favorite.

      It was late summer in 2001 and after six months of startup work, things were going so well at the Design Center—the team was finally approaching critical mass, and a concept of the chip was coming together—that we decided to have our own little private celebration. “To success,” I toasted. We clinked glasses and smiled like silly old fools.

      Darkness crept across the sky, pushing the last of the golden glow below the horizon. Kahle lit tiki torches and citronella candles to keep the mosquitoes at bay. Akrout was in particularly high spirits, and the more he drank, the more he unconsciously slipped French or Arabic words into the conversation—something Kahle and I affectionately called Chekib-speak. Every once in a while, something got lost in translation, and Akrout backed up to explain. After about the fifth time, I laughed so hard I nearly fell out of my chair. I guess we were pretty loud, because Mary, Kahle’s wife, came out to tell us to quiet down. The kids were in bed.

      The silence might have lasted a full two seconds after she went back inside, then Akrout picked up right where he’d left off. He and Kahle took off on a tangent, fiercely debating some minute technical feature of the chip. No detail was too insignificant, for Akrout was such a geek at heart. Even as a successful vice president of one of the most powerful corporations in America, he could still hold his own against our top circuit designers. He loved technology; he was on fire about it.

      Akrout could argue with Kahle all night long, but I didn’t want to squander this opportunity. We weren’t alone all that often. There was just one thing I wanted to hear from him. “What’s keeping you awake at night?” I asked, interrupting the friendly banter. “What’s the bottom line? The worst fear?”

      Akrout replied without hesitation: “We don’t have any idea what Intel has up their sleeves, what they might bring out of the shadows in response to STI’s challenge. The home computing environment, not just games, is the ultimate target for all three STI partners, but Intel still dominates the PC market with over eighty-five percent of the market share. Intel also provided the chip for Microsoft’s Xbox, the most significant threat to the PlayStation line. We need to know what to expect next in their products.”

      Intel was and still is, the number one semiconductor chip manufacturing company in the world. They had a yearly revenue of $40 billion, giving them both the dollars and the engineering talent to go head-to-head with any company in the industry.

      We sipped our Scotch—had a nice buzz going—and discussed Intel’s potential for a while. Akrout was right. We didn’t really know our enemy anymore. The excitement in the Design Center was almost palpable, and my team was revving up for a serious race, but did they know where the finish line was? What could we offer that would beat Intel? That was really the question of the day. We had to know where our competition was heading.

      I drove into the parking garage right behind Akrout the next morning. I wasn’t normally an early bird, but he was. I glanced at my watch just to double check. Yes, his routine changed, not mine. He usually arrived early enough to park his BMW sedan in the same convenient first-floor spot in a nearly empty garage, but today I followed him to the fourth level before we came upon some empty slots. Maybe he felt as rough as I did after our night with Kahle and got a late start. It made me feel better to think that he was no more Superman than I was.

      Then I watched him climb out of his car. He was practically wrinkle-free, all crisp and neat and bright eyed. On second thought, I decided, he had probably already attended two business meetings by phone, sent twenty e-mails from home, and made a dozen phone calls while he drove into work. He grinned at me, and we walked together from the garage to the office building, though I had to pour on a little speed to keep up with his jaunty pace. He chattered cheerfully about the beautiful weather, and I grunted occasional responses. Obviously, the Scotch affected us differently. Maybe he was Superman after all.

      Akrout always came in with that sunny smile on his face, patting the backs of the engineers he met along the way to his office, stopping to chat with someone by the coffee machine. Junior engineers were utterly stunned when Akrout called them by name and asked questions about their specific design work. His interest was genuine, and every engineer sensed the sincerity in his words.

      Most days I saw little of Akrout. He spent his time framing the big picture, getting support from his peer executives, clearing away the barriers that threatened the Design Center. He assessed and reassessed the strengths and weaknesses of the STI partnerships. He dissected and studied the assumptions behind the business case that told us this venture made good financial sense. He queried experts on the future market potential for this breakthrough product. He placated customers. On top of that, he directed all chip development for Apple’s desktops and laptops, and Nintendo’s GameCube. A very busy man indeed.

      We parted at the elevators on the third floor, but as Akrout stepped away, he grinned and said over his shoulder, “What is Intel thinking, and what are you going to do about it?” I nodded and kept walking toward my cubicle. It was too big a question to answer that early in the morning.

      Akrout enjoyed