Headline, July10, 2013

'''ATIQ RAZA : THE GREAT LUMINARY

 OF THE CHIP WORLD'''

When he had the time, which was ever so rare and rare, Atiq Raza thought about his own journey through the world of work. He had come a long way since 1979, when he arrived in the Unites States from his native Pakistan.

He had spent seven years in various engineering and management positions at high-tech firms. Then in 1988, he became VP of Engineering at NexGen Inc., a microprocessor company. Eight years later, then president,CEO, and Chairman of the company, he sold it to AMD for $850 million.

THE technology world began to recognize Raza's formidable talent, when he led Advanced Micro Device's ambush of Intel by bringing the K6 family of processor products to market and laying the foundation for the development of the Athlon Processor.

Raza, who at the time was AMD's president and chief operating officer, was reportedly next in line to become CEO. But he shocked the chip-making industry when he abruptly left citing ''personal reasons''. In the fall of 1999, Raza quietly began to assemble a new enterprise, dubbed Raza Foundries Inc. (RFI), a high-intensity ''meta company'' that sought to invest in broadband networking and communications startups, and then turbocharge their growth by providing technical and executive strength.

In December 1999, YuniNetworks, two cofounders, Kenneth Yun, 43, an Electrical Engineering Professor at the University of California at San Diego, and his sister Kay Yun, 37, a former VP of corporate finance at Goldman Sachs and Co, signed on with RFI. YuniNetworks Inc,, was developing muti-terabit switching fabric technology for Internet users.

Applied Micro Circuits Corp was so impressed by this technology that it made a bid to buy the six months old company for about $250 million. RFI reaped $100 million. ''The window of opportunity doesn't stay open for very long,'' concedes Hunt, of the RFI, ''that's why as soon as we have defined a compelling product, we devote all of our energies to blasting through the window and getting the product to the market.''

According to Raza's worldview, communications has become the new frontier for the semi-conductor industry. The increased power of the desktops and servers has put huge demands on the world's computing infrastructure. ''The economic value has moved from the desktop to the infratstructure,'' says Raza.

''There has been a huge migration from the microprocessor world into the broadband networking world.''  But at the time, RFI wasn't exactly swimming  in a swimming pond. Many of the domains that Raza pursued were  -optical networking systems and components, routers, traffic engineering systems, wireless broadband. Each one, practically an industry into itself, And in each Atiq Raza left his own indelible contribution and footprints.

His colleagues recall, ''Atiq's meetings are very short and very decisive. He is not interested in how many lines of code you've written. The whole conversation revolves around hitting the key milestones and how we are delivering value to the customer.

His lesson : when you see a problem, make a decision right then and there.''

The technical world even the funding world always felt that Atiq Raza was not scalable!! I feel they were right then but no more. Atiq Raza must scale to !WOW! the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless. It would be a great legacy to teach the students not only inventions but what they owe to the future generations.

With most respectful dedication to Jeff Bezos the matchless retailing revolutionary from Amazon.

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless