High School Dropout, Self-Taught Chip Designer 816
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."
Forgot one key to success (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Yes but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Article free of registration. (Score:2, Insightful)
eureka! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yes but... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Yes but... (Score:1, Insightful)
NO way (Score:2, Insightful)
The good thing from this story is that I hope employers will open their ears and eyes to the fact that university is USELESS to form engineers when the drive is not there, and that university is just a replacement for forced military service.
There will always been room for the underdog (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
just think (Score:1, Insightful)
Let us hope (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes but... (Score:3, Insightful)
And since everyone's giving an opinion on this; I give her a 6.5.
Re:There will always been room for the underdog (Score:5, Insightful)
Lexus and Scion are made by Toyota.
Saturn made be General Motors,
Geo, was GM rebrand of cars made by Toyota I beleive
Subaru - Fuju Heavy Industries
Kia is from Huyndi (large comglomerate.)
But your right, software/computers are still places were an individual can make it with hard work and good design.
Also she is working for a NJ toy manufacturer not out on her own.
Re:that noise you are about to hear ... (Score:1, Insightful)
She is a 4-5/10 at best, maybe a bonus point for knowing how to program a FPGA.
Re:Let us hope (Score:1, Insightful)
Why do you say this as if it's in the future?
impossible? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
High school dropout (Score:2, Insightful)
Bills Gates, too. (Score:2, Insightful)
How do you know she doesn't have a proper education? Who says that learning on your own isn't proper?
Maybe Bill Gates should have stayed in school and got a degree. He could have been rich, I tell you!
Re:Told you So (Score:2, Insightful)
She seems to have the classic "I don't have time for this sh*t since I got better things to do" attitude of so many of the big movers in the computer industry (i.e., Steve Wozinak, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and John Carmack). If she needs more education to help her solve a problem, she'll seek out on her own.
Cue the "Liberal Arts" Crowd.. (Score:0, Insightful)
I'm only in college because I do not have the motivation to go out and learn all the stuff by myself. I enjoy having structured (but not overbearing) objectives to my learning path. I could probably be done a lot quicker if I did not have all these boring and uninteresting "liberal arts" program classes (you know, literature, humanities, etc.) that do not relate to my degree or build on skills useful for becoming at what I want to do.
Remember, there is no one path to success. This person built her own success without listening to the majority of voices that say you have to follow a certain path to succeed.
Re:just think (Score:4, Insightful)
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*
Re:Yeah But (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:NO way (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:SHE? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not irrelevant whatsoever - society puts differing forces on males and females, and as the GP points out it is extraordinarily rare to find a woman excel outside of "the system" (you'll find a good number of examples of men who persevered against the odds, pursuing success in non-traditional ways, but almost no women doing the same). This says more about society than woman, and I think it's largely because society encourages women who don't academically excel to become homemakers and baby machines (no I am not saying that homemakers and parents didn't academically excel, just that it does end up being the "default" profession of many woman in that situation).
Finally someone I can relate too (Score:5, Insightful)
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!!
Re:Yes but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't Need School to be Educated. (Score:3, Insightful)
-Mark Twain
Re:impossible? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure now, but it wasn't too long ago that you had to spend a large amount of money on a compiler, and a very expensive harddrive, since your sourcecode would take up more space than the floppy your program would eventually live on.
I remember spending $500 on the Merlin assembler so I could write Apple][ games.
Plus, all you need to *design* chips is a piece of EE software. There is a difference between designing a CPU, and actually manufacturing one.
We designed 8bit CPUs in college classes.
I'll venture a guess: (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [woz.org] many [microsoft.com] great [prism-magazine.org] innovators [apple.com] were drop-outs.
Re:NO way (Score:3, Insightful)
For you, FPGA programming might be trivial but you are lost when it goes down to hardware. However, not everyone in on the globe have the exactly skillset as you.
I have education in electrical automation (mainly analogue processes, logics (CS21 et.al.), instrumentation and so forth. Lot of electronics and hardware thou...)
I'm a self taught programmer in several languages and currently earning my salary at the software side on ARM9 processors.
To me, both chip design and FPGA design seem quite plausible but too laborous to even try to pursue on my own. Jack of all arts you might say...
Mathematics and physical phenomenons involved in electrical science are not too complicated anymore. Many before us have already figured much out, and much of that information is available to everyone.
Re:NO way (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
Re:I think I'm in love. (Score:2, Insightful)
Important how? Do you suppose she's attracted to horny, undersexed, drooling morons who post on slashdot?
Re:NO way (Score:4, Insightful)
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).
Re:should of stayed in school (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but a silly joystick running 20-year-old video games is a far greater achievement than most individual engineers will ever achieve working for large companies.
Re:impossible? (Score:5, Insightful)
And as far as the "all this girl had to do" line, no way. All she had to do was:
1) Implement a 6502 processor. There is a free core or two floating around, which she likely used. Still not exactly trivial, though.
2) Reverse-engineer and implement the DRAM circuitry. The design does not use DRAM, but you still need to emulate certain portions of the hardware for timing reasons. When DRAM refreshes, the processor has to snooze.
3) Reverse-engineer and implement the SID sound chip. Fairly major headache.
4) Reverse-engineer and implement the video circuitry. Major headache. This system even had hardware sprites.
5) Reverse-engineer and implement the different hardware ports.
6) Include a bridge that would allow a PC keyboard to emulate a C64 keyboard.
7) Emulate a cassette drive and load it with warez.
8) Implement the analog bits of the video and sound circuitry. Maybe somebody else did this.
In short, I am impressed.
I have been through an ASIC tape-out. It costs in the neighborhood of $100K. MUCH cheaper to go with a cheap FPGA and serial-EEPROM for stuff like this. Once you get well over 10,000 units shipped, it is time to start looking at an ASIC. Until then, a cheap FPGA is probably your best bet.
She's not the first or only (Score:3, Insightful)
While women are still fighting the stereotypes of the past, there are examples of women excelling in almost every field, even traditonal male only roles such as CEO (eg Carol Bartz, CEO and president of Autodesk).
Asshole. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Don't Need School to be Educated. (Score:4, Insightful)
Some people are forced to do both, the full time student that also worked full time commands much more respect from everyone than the guy that daddy had enough money to pay for everything or the person that was lucky enough to receive a full ride.
College enables you by providing resources that normally you would have to pay for... it's hard to study Chemistry on your own because the first step is to build a lab.
Those are the ONLY advantages to college. you can learn EVERYTHING they teach in a college without ever setting foot in one or ever listening to a "professor".
You do not receive a better education at a college, you receive a better opportunity to learn in an atmosphere that is conducive to learning.
Success HS is about doing what you're told (Score:3, Insightful)
Clever kids get bored out of their minds doing "busy-work", but that's what you're graded on.
Welcome to socialized education.
Re:Bills Gates, too. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, that means his father was rich.
Re:NO way (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Sexism (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm halfway through the responses and haven't yet encountered a single comment about the greatness of this project!
/. disappoints once again.
So schools not that great for some (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yes but... (Score:2, Insightful)
I can understand why there are so few females in the business, most of them probably gets overwhelmed by the attention they get because of their gender, and not their merits.
Re:SHE? (Score:2, Insightful)
Explain this (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure you can fiddle around with autocad and many other cad electronic design tools but that does not make someone an electrical engineer or chip designer.
It makes me wonder how she got started and how she got hired and who invested in her idea's and got her work to the fabrication plants that built her products.
Re:Yes but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Btw, I met her at the Vintage Computer Feastival in Mountain View last month. She's a very nice, intellegent (obviously) and beautifully woman (even more obviously).
Re:Yes but... (Score:2, Insightful)
The reason girls don't do tech? Because there's no one to freakin' talk to, that's why! Millions of guys who do the same thing, and they'll all talk to each other endlessly about it. But not to girl techs. What *we* get is "do you like to..." fill in a whole bunch of blanks about sex.
Frankly, about the 1000th time, it gets boring.
Re:NO way (Score:2, Insightful)
My son, who is now 25, has been designing circuits and programming microproprocessors for years now. He hasn't been in any school since 4th grade. He has never once questioned whether he could do something he wanted to do, he just did it. His latest invention is going to manufacturing now with the support of several VC's, who also have had no problem with the idea that he's 'uneducated'. The fact that he's designed and built working prototypes of a very novel and complex design is proof enough.
Like Jeri--passion and interest--and knowing that you can--is all you need.
Re:impossible? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's almost enough to make me want to watch QVC to see about picking one up.