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IP: MEA CULPA! History of 8008, early Intel uPs, etc.
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 02:21:03 -0400
Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 16:47:29 -0700 From: John Wharton <wharton () shasta Stanford EDU> To: dave () farber net Dave-- Sigh. It would appear I inadvertently opened a huge can of worms last week. And that my first effort to identify and corral the worms caused the can to rupture further. I fear we now find ourselves swimming in a worm stampede. I'm refering to your posting of an announcement sent out by Dennis Allison for a colloquium to be held at Stanford on May 15, in which Stan Mazor is scheduled to give a talk on current issues in photolithography. Lest anyone infer otherwise, **I** am the individual who wrote the biographical sketch that has caused so much consternation. To the extent that some of your readers may feel the announcement is incorrect or misleading, I want the record to be clear that neither Dennis nor Stan was responsible for any of the content which is now being questioned. Mea culpa!!! The fault and the blame are entirely mine. Perhaps some background is in order: I help co-coordinate the Stanford EE380 colloquium with Prof. Allison. The speaker originally scheduled for May 15 was forced to cancel due to circumstances beyond his control. It was my responsibility to find a replacement. Due to another misunderstanding (again, my fault!), a possible back-up speaker also fell through. So as of the afternon of May 8 -- seven days before show-time -- we found ourselves with no one scheduled to cover the May 15 slot . At that point I gave Stan Mazor a call to see if he'd be willing to step in and save Stanford's butt. His company (Numerical Technologies Inc.) is doing some fascinating work with high-resolution photolithography, work I thought would interest our students. After much wheedling and calling in of favors, Stan graciously agreed to fill the May 15 opening himself. In the interest of time he immediately emailed me an abstract and brief biographical sketch. What Stan wrote about himself consisted just of the following: Stanley Mazor is Director of Customer Services at Numerical Technologies, Inc. in San Jose, a company which provides services in advanced photolithography. That was it. He said nothing about any past involvement with Intel, much less the role he played in the developing the 4004, 8080, or any other Intel microprocessors. For sure he said nothing about the 8008. Perhaps I should have left things at that. But I've know Stan for more than 25 years (in the 1970s we both worked at Intel as Application Engineers, and both played roles in defining some of Intel's early microcomputer products) so I took it upon myself to expound somewhat on Stan's overly-abbreviated bio. I drew on my long friendship with Stan, my general knowledge of the industry and its history, and other correspondence and materials that can be found on the web. The embellished bio I compiled was the one posted to the class web site. Dennis picked up the posting and emailed it to memebers of the Stanford community. A copy found its way to you, Dave; you posted it to the IP list on Friday; and it would seem a number of your readers have since taken offense. The rest, as they say, is history. I should, perhaps, have passed a draft of my rewritten bio past Mr. Mazor for approval before posting it, but in the interest of time did not do so. Most likely he did not even know what the bio said, or that I'd edited it, until all the excitement developed on your list. (He may still not know; I've had no contact with Mr. Mazor since Wednesday afternoon. I'm hoping he'll find some humor in the situation, and not use this flare-up to cancel out his speaking date! :-) Again, though, if anyone was upset by the posting, it's me they should be angry at, not Mr. Mazor or Prof. Allison. ==== Now, having said all that, I'd like to comment that it's still not clear to me how or why all this furor arose. The upcoming colloquium will discuss photolithography, not the history of microprocessors at Intel. There was nothing in the abstract discussing who invented what, when, or for whom. There was absolutely no mention of the 8008. My mistake, apparently, was in saying Stan prepared architecture specs for the industry's first microprocessors. Perhaps the worm-can would have remained closed had I added a qualifier or chosen a different adjective, alluding to "some of the industry's first microprocessors" or "Intel's first microprocessors" or "the industry's first commercially- viable processors" or "processors including the 4004 and 8080 but not including the 8008, which grew out of a design developed by Datapoint". Or I might have added a footnote to head off the conflict that seems to arise whenever anyone claims credit for designing any aspect of any successful product -- namely that complex systems can be viewed at many levels of abstraction. In this case, e.g., one might identify a microprocessor's programming model; its instruction set; its microarchitecture; its gate-level implementation; its pinout; its bus interface; or its system-level design architecture. The individual responsible for each level may see himself as developing part of the product's "architecture". They may all be correct. The fact that someone was involved in one particular level of an engineering design is not meant to dishonor or slight the contributions of other engineers who may have worked on the system at other levels. But that seems like overkill, to go to such lengths to clarify one clause of one sentence of one paragraph of a brief biographical sketch accompanying an overdue lecture announcement -- especially considering that the topic of the talk is unrelated to the clause in question. === Now, it's my understanding that Stan Mazor did indeed play a role in preparing specifications for various aspects of the 4004 and 8080 product architectures (but perhaps not the 8008), and that he *IS* a co-holder of a patent on at least one of those parts. That's all I'd intended to say, and I haven't read anything posted by anyone that sought to refute that. I shall now reread the many replies prompted by the original class posting, and would like to reserve the right to correct any factual errors that emerge. In the mean time, Dave, I wish to again apologize to Stan, Dennis, and any of your other readers who may have taken offense, and to again thank Stan for being willing to step into the breech when Stanford was desperately in need of a last-minute speaker replacement. No good deed goes unpunished, it would appear. Thank you, Dave, for letting me add this to the historical record. --John Wharton
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