35 Facts About Vinod Dham

Vinod Dham is an Indian-American engineer, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist.

Vinod Dham is known as the 'Father of the Pentium Chip' for his contribution to the development of Intel's Pentium micro-processor.

Vinod Dham is a mentor and advisor, and sits on the boards of companies, including startups funded through his India-based fund Indo-US Venture Partners, where he is the founding managing director.

Vinod Dham's father was a member of the army civilian department who had moved from Rawalpindi, Punjab, Pakistan, to India during the Partition of India.

Vinod Dham was a part of the early team that put together a facility in Delhi, where he worked for four years.

Vinod Dham found it to be an exciting field because it applied the knowledge he had learned as an engineer to his developing interests in understanding the physics behind the behaviour of semiconductor devices.

Vinod Dham did cutting-edge work on developing advanced non-volatile memories while there.

At the University of Cincinnati, when NCR needed help, Vinod Dham was the student in his class who had worked the longest in semi-conductors.

Vinod Dham then joined Intel Corporation as an engineer, where he led the development of the world-famous Pentium processor.

Vinod Dham is called the "Pentium Engineer" for his role in the development of the Pentium Micro-Processor.

Vinod Dham is one of the co-inventors of Intel's first Flash Memory Technology.

Vinod Dham rose to the position of the Vice President of Micro-Processor Group at Intel.

Vinod Dham believes that Intel's ability to 'focus and execute' while maintaining full compatibility of the application with its previous-generation microprocessors was the key reason for its success over dozens of these big competitors.

Vinod Dham left Intel in 1995 and joined the startup NexGen, which was acquired by AMD.

Vinod Dham held the vice president position of AMD's computation products group.

Vinod Dham then went on to lead a startup, Silicon Spice, in April 1998, which he re-directed to build a VOIP chip and sold it to Broadcom in 2000.

Vinod Dham is currently the managing director and founder of Indo-US Venture Partners, an early-stage India-focused fund that he founded after NewPath.

Vinod Dham has, over the years, been a board member and technical advisor to dozens of private and public companies worldwide.

When Vinod Dham joined Intel, it had $1 million in revenue.

Vinod Dham said he was a keen observer of how Andy Grove built strategy and organisation for Intel's success in the microprocessor business.

Vinod Dham came across a company called NexGen, a boutique processor design company that was eight years old, and joined as COO.

Vinod Dham convinced the NexGen management to explore what appeared to be a perfect synergy for merging the two companies - NexGen had a product but no factories and process technology, whereas AMD had a factory and advanced technology but no product.

Vinod Dham's insights proved right, and AMD acquired NexGen's product and process technology for $857 million.

Vinod Dham, who had made a career out of microprocessors, was no longer interested in just chips and gained interest in communications processors.

Vinod Dham learned from dealing with several customers that there was an emerging need for developing chips that could effectively transfer voice over the Internet.

Vinod Dham explains, "The Internet protocol was being used mainly for data and delivering voice over the Internet, which was designed primarily for data transfer and was a tricky problem in terms of technology".

Vinod Dham re-directed the company to build this new chip to support VoIP, among the first in the world at the time.

Vinod Dham sold Silicon Spice to Broadcom for $1.2 billion in an all-stock deal.

In December 2001, Vinod Dham made a trip to India, where he met several businesses.

Vinod Dham has been a trustee of the American India Foundation since 2001.

Vinod Dham has been actively involved in fund-raising and was awarded the Visionary Award for his DE work by Montek Singh Ahluwalia in 2010.

In 1993, Vinod Dham was named one of the Top 25 Executives in the US Computer Industry.

Vinod Dham said the survival instinct is the critical factor underlying the success of Indians in Silicon Valley.

Vinod Dham was profiled by India Abroad among 50 Most Influential Indian Americans.

Vinod Dham was profiled among the first and notable Indian American Achievers by the Asian Pacific American Program established HomeSpun: Smithsonian Indian American Heritage Project, which will chronicle the story of immigrants from India and their descendants in America.