The Race For A New Game Machine:. David Shippy

physics) from the Université Pierre & Marie Curie in France. Astonishingly, he was fluent in no less than five very dissimilar languages.

      Dominique poked her head into the office to announce that Akrout’s wife was on the phone. I offered to step out for a moment to give him some privacy, but Akrout motioned for me to remain seated. He carried on a short rapid-fire phone conversation in French. I smiled and relaxed, realizing that his mastery of foreign languages provided all the privacy Akrout needed. When he hung up, he picked up his conversation with me, hardly missing a beat.

      Akrout started his IBM career in 1982 as a circuit designer in the elite high-speed memory design group. These folks designed memory chips that were much faster than the standard memory chips attached to most PCs. They laid down intricate patterns of millions of transistors, leading edge work that tapped technical skills as well as artistic talent. Akrout showed a flair for management and far-reaching technical and administrative acumen, overseeing a technical smorgasbord that included everything from general-purpose microprocessors to application-specific chips to complex mixed analog/digital designs. In 2000, as director of high-speed and broadband microprocessor development at IBM’s Microelectronics Division, Akrout managed the development of PowerPC processors for Apple’s Macintosh desktops and for Nintendo’s GameCube. In 2001, his role expanded to include responsibility for the entire STI Design Center. He was a star, and the Design Center was lucky to have him.

      A man of great charisma and technical depth, Akrout inspired trust both from his own team and from the heads of other companies who wanted to do business with IBM. He was well liked and trusted by the Japanese directors within the Design Center, certainly a big advantage for IBM. Like Sony’s Kutaragi, Akrout was a visionary, willing to take significant business risks. He was a breath of fresh air in the executive ranks, very unassuming and approachable, always focused on doing the “right thing” for IBM. I was generally unimpressed with IBM’s new executive management chain, but Akrout was different. He had the perfect mixture of technical ability and people skills.

      Other than the one phone call he took from his wife, Akrout gave me his complete and undivided attention during the afternoon. It didn’t seem to be special treatment, either; I think he treated anyone who came to his office with the same focused attention. When he listened, he listened with everything in him. His positive energy raised the bar on any conversation.

      As I left Akrout’s office, I checked the time. The hours had flown by, and I was late to pick up my two sons. I rushed to gather up my laptop, and then zoomed out of the building.

      I raced south down Mopac Highway toward my sons’ school, but Austin’s daily traffic snarl brought me to an abrupt halt. Taillights lined the highway as far as I could see. While I crept along, my thoughts turned to the enormous task that lay ahead of us. Akrout was unmatched in charisma and optimism, but could he convince this team, one not even completely formed yet, that they could be successful where no others had been? Would this kind and jovial man be strong enough to lock horns with Sony and Toshiba when tough calls landed on the doorstep, as they undoubtedly would? And what about the executive team above? Akrout had a grand vision for the future of this product within IBM, but I knew it would be a hard sell to the server-centric, conservative decision makers above us. Those powerful executives remained focused on the IBM server and mainframe computer systems that claimed the highest revenue. They were not interested in the emerging low-end computer space belonging to the PC and the game machine. I smiled. Worried or not, I liked this kind of challenge. I looked forward to being on Akrout’s team and to being IBM’s rebellious stepchild once again.

      I looked at the bumper-to-bumper cars around me. A huge number of those drivers were involved in one way or another in Austin’s booming high-tech industry. IBM, Motorola, Dell, Sun, AMD, Applied Materials, Samsung, Solectron, National Instruments, 3M, and a host of smaller businesses called Austin home. With the momentum of all these high-tech companies, Austin was becoming a smaller version of the oft-publicized “Silicon Valley” in California. We called our town “Silicon Hills.” Big things were happening in computer chips all over and Austin was right in the thick of the action. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle, or maybe a chicken-and-egg scenario. Did the high-tech companies come to Austin because of low tax and economic considerations found in Texas, and then the engineers followed? Or did the growing pool of engineers draw the companies here by offering the necessary resources for corporate or project growth? With the prestigious University of Texas here, a steady stream of new graduates were readily available to infuse fresh ideas and new learning into the creative process.

      Computer chips were an integral part of nearly every facet of life in the civilized world, from home appliances to automobiles, cell phones to soda machines, TVs to pacemakers. Technological advances arrived at hypersonic speed, making most electronic devices obsolete within just a couple of years. Demand for the latest and greatest digital gadget was unprecedented. Austin was a high-tech oasis, ideally positioned to take advantage of the new markets spawned by the widespread use of the Internet. I joined the throngs in the enormous turnover in the Austin workforce as engineers moved from one startup company to the other in search of a rocket ride to riches via an initial product offering. The dot-com explosion was on the decline, and those same engineers were now looking for more stable employment.

      The line of cars crawled past the exits for the University of Texas and then downtown and its famous Sixth Street. We rolled across the Town Lake Bridge. It was still hard for me to believe I was working for IBM again, and under heavy veils of secrecy, helping create the PlayStation 3 Cell processor. I had one goal: create a world-class, leading-edge processor chip and deliver it in time for a Christmas 2005 product launch.

      Not since the invention of the PC more than twenty years ago had chip engineers been asked to start a design of this magnitude from scratch. Truth be told, this was the mouth-watering opportunity that enticed me to return to Big Blue. Chip designers seldom get to start with a clean sheet of paper, primarily because the PC and server markets demand absolute backward compatibility with previous generations of hardware and software. Heaven help us all if the new version of Microsoft Word doesn’t open old Word files. It’s even more vital in applications that are more sophisticated. Given the high cost of a skilled workforce, lengthy time to market cycles, increasing design complexity, and the exorbitant cost of specialized design tools, we always had plenty of incentive to lean on previous designs. A clean sheet of paper excited every engineer who grew weary of working on derivatives and spin-offs from someone else’s design. It was our chance to create. Success could bring a paradigm shift in home computing.

      Thoughts of fame and glory danced in my head, and I felt pretty good by the time I pulled up in front of my sons’ school. With Kutaragi’s grand vision as inspiration, Akrout, Kahle, and I were about to set out to design the Holy Grail of computing: the highest frequency, highest performing microprocessor in the industry—better than anything any PC had ever offered. We were going to make a supercomputer on a single chip.

      If we could pull it off, a whole generation of gamers worldwide would pay us tribute, with their bloody digital broadswords raised on high.

      CHAPTER 2

      Building a Team for Success

      The first step to building a highly successful team is to recruit top talent and seed the team with true leaders. The next step is to organize the various disciplines and leaders to maximize success.

      DURING MY FIRST WEEK ON THE JOB, I got a good look at the towering mountain of work ahead of us. My coworkers consisted of Chekib Akrout, Jim Kahle, one or two managers, a handful of high-powered engineers, and a few administrative assistants. That was the whole team! Woefully understaffed, we plowed through heaps of resumes, scheduled interviews, and, in between, tried to arrange office space, develop org charts, and write job descriptions. The technical work was still in its infancy. I figured I’d better get some other engineers on board quick, or I was going to be one tired puppy. I wanted some help with all that design work Kahle promised. Finding top-notch technical leads was my highest priority.

      While I was head down trying to staff my team, Kahle dragged me into the politics of IBM’s latest processor war. The battle for chip development funding between the Server Group and the Microelectronics Division, where