Mike Hackworth，全名Michael L. Hackworth， Cirrus Logic公司董事会主席，无晶圆厂界的元老
Cirrus Logic公司董事会主席，创建人和资深董事，自1985年
Michael Hackworth自1997年7月起但任Cirrus Logic公司董事会主席职务至今。他曾于1985年1月至1998年6月兼任公司的总裁和首席执行官，并继续担任首席执行官直至1999年2月。Hackworth先生曾于1999年6月至9月期间，在Aspirian(一个私人公司）担任总裁和首席执行官。
A native of Silicon Valley and a resident of Saratoga, Michael L. Hackworth has served as president and CEO of Cirrus Logic Inc. since January 1985. During his 30-year tenure in the semiconductor industry, he has previously worked at Motorola, Fairchild Semiconductor and Signetics Corp., Inc. in a variety of general management, marketing and sales management positions.
Hackworth attended Serra High School in San Mateo and holds a degree in electrical engineering from Santa Clara University. In 1990, he was named by Ernst and Young as the Semiconductor Entrepreneur of the Year.
Hackworth is active in community activities, including the Engineering Advisory Board and the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, both at Santa Clara University. He is also active with Junior Achievement, The Tech Museum of Innovation and the San Jose Symphony. He has led Cirrus Logic to sponsor such programs as the Santa Clara County Children's Shelter, the Second Harvest Food Bank, the Silicon Valley Charity Ball and Boston's Computer Museum.
He spoke with writer Jill Wolfson and student Doug Ricket.
Wolfson : Tell me about yourself as a child. Were you the smartest kid in the class? Were you the least likely to succeed?
Hackworth : In the grade school/high school arena, I was pretty much a solid citizen. I participated in leadership programs; I was a class officer, participated in athletics, participated in the school paper. I was a good student, but not a straight-A student. But I had a good enough grade point average to get into Santa Clara University. I participated in extracurricular activities outside of school; Junior Achievement is one that comes to mind.
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I had a great sandbox at home. I had blocks of wood that were different shapes and I used to build roads, bridges, and dams in the sandbox. Through that, I developed an interest in civil engineering.
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Wolfson : Do you remember your Junior Achievement project?
Hackworth : Junior Achievement is a little different today than when I was a kid. Then, you actually modeled a company and you went off and set up a little workspace. You wrote a very, very simple business plan. I think it was probably a sheet of paper. And then you actually sold stock for, like, ten cents a share. With that, you actually made a product, sold it, and then you went back to the investors and you showed them that you either made a profit or you didn't.
One year, I produced a belt rack. (laughs). It was a block of wood that was varnished and had five hooks on it. The production line was pretty simple. The big deal was getting the wood sawed into the right shape and painting it. The other product I produced was a napkin holder.
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I got some wise advice from a priest saying, "Why don't you just go through high school and then step back and ask yourself, do you still want to be a priest?" Well, after that advice, I never asked the question again.
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These were not exactly high-tech products. But you could actually understand the problems of manufacturing. All of a sudden, whoops, we don't have a saw. Or, how do we organize the work? It was a terrific experience.
I understood something about what a company was and how it created value. And I understood what it meant to sell stock, raise money, to capitalize a company, and then to be held accountable to the shareholders at the end.
Wolfson : Did you have an early interest in high technology?
Hackworth : Originally, I was interested in civil engineering. I had a great sandbox at home. I had blocks of wood that were different shapes and I used to build roads, bridges, and dams in the sandbox. Through that, I developed an interest in civil engineering.
Earlier on, I thought I was going to be a priest, interestingly enough. But I got some wise advice from a priest saying, "Why don't you just go through high school and then step back and ask yourself, do you still want to be a priest?" Well, after that advice, I never asked the question again.
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I was sweeping the floors and doing little odd job things. But it was giving me exposure to the electronics industry,
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Instead, I became interested in civil engineering. In my junior year of high school, I sprained my ankle during track season, and so I was out. I thought that I might as well go get a job. So I went to what was then the unemployment agency and asked about after-school jobs. They asked me what I wanted to study in college. I said I want to be in engineering, thinking civil engineering and building roads, bridges, and dams. Well, they said that I was something like 23rd on the list, but that none of the people ahead of me want to go to college and be an engineer. This company has an opening for somebody who's going to be an engineer.
I went over there, and it turned out to be an electronics company. I was sweeping the floors and doing little oddjob things. But it was giving me exposure to the electronics industry, which, at that time was really aerospace oriented -- basically missiles and rockets and airplanes.
I ended up working there all through high school, all through five years of college, It was in the course of working there that I shifted my interest to the electronics industry.
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The interesting thing is that my engineering career only lasted about 9 months.
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Wolfson : What was it that specifically captured your interest?
Hackworth : You have to remember that this was the 50s and there weren't a heck of a lot of electronics floating around. There was Hewlett Packard on the one hand and these microwave vacuum tube companies on the other.
I guess the notion of being able to design something was to me very, very fascinating. I just never had any doubts once I started.
The interesting thing is that my engineering career only lasted about 9 months. After school, I had actually already worked for this company for many years. I rapidly became the one person who could go talk to the customers and explain what the product did and answer questions and help them use the product, as well as design it.
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I don't think I was ever a very good engineer. But I did have one accomplishment of noteworthiness.
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So I suddenly became what we now call an application engineer, a marketing kind of person. I designed a product, then I'd take it to the customer. Then pretty soon, I was just spending time with the customer, and I wasn't doing any more design.
I don't think I was ever a very good engineer. (laughs). But I did have one accomplishment of noteworthiness.
One of the projects I was developing was for the lunar excursion module that went on the moon. There were two what-are-called ladder networks. It was a pretty simple design job, but it was a very accurate, precision thing. And they needed a part number. There was MLH-1, which were my initials, and the MLH-2. There aren't too many engineers who have their initials on the moon. (Laughs).
But that's about it to my short-lived career. I went from there into the applications and marketing.
Ricket : Have you found a way to keep your interest in the engineering aspect of it, even though you're now dealing more primarily with the managerial part of it?
Hackworth : When you're in general management, you have to deal with all the different aspects of the company. One of the choices that a general manager can make as they're moving up the ranks is to stay focused in the area where they're comfortable. So if you're a marketing person and you have a general management role, you tend to stay close to the customer and do marketing things. If you're a finance guy and you become general manager, you tend to stay involved with the numbers because you're comfortable with that.
I was always afraid that if I became the general manager and I wasn't working in the areas I was uncomfortable with, I'd get surprised, a nasty surprise. So the area that I was always the least comfortable with would be the technology because that changes very rapidly. If you're not doing real, serious engineering work, then very quickly you become obsolete.
So, as I was promoted into general management kind of roles, I always gravitated to the area that I was the least familiar with, which generally always takes me back to technology. I would just try to understand the programs that the guys were doing. I would ask common-sense questions. I would personally try to understand what they were trying to accomplish, what their obstacles were, what problems they were trying to solve, what kind of help they needed, what the risks were. That's how I try to keep on top of that.
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There aren't too many engineers who have their initials on the moon.
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In 1989, our V.P. of Engineering said to me, "Mike, this company is focused on making products for personal computers. And you don't have a personal computer. You don't use one." And I said, "I hate the keyboard, because I never learned to type." He said, "Mike, You really can't call yourself a CEO and not use computers."
So I bought one, and I needed an application. There's this company called Quicken that does this checkbook, financial thing. Personally, it was taking a lot of my time on the weekends to straighten out my checkbook and take care of things. The computer turned out to be great. That sucked me in.
Once you have one application that sucks you in and you go through the barrier of learning how to use the thing and understanding the operating system and becoming at least a halfway enthusiastic typist, there's all these other wonderful applications. So it just grew and grew. So the computer now is a very important practical tool for me.
Ricket : What do you see as the role of technology today, and how its role will be changing in the future?
Hackworth : Let me answer that question from a semiconductor perspective because that's the industry I've been in for almost 30 years now. The semiconductor industry has been a very powerful force in the world . I'm sure you've heard of Moore's Law -- the finer geometries you can print on a wafer allows you to do more and more things. The fact that each year or two we are able to double what we can put on a chip for approximately the same cost has been such a huge economic engine and a huge improvement in the quality of life. It is unlike anything before it.
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I was always afraid that if I became the general manager and I wasn't working in the areas I was uncomfortable with, I'd get surprised, a nasty surprise.
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Moore's Law has physical limits. I saw a presentation by a fellow, a professor from Cal Tech, who said at about .015 or .012 microns you run out of electrons. So somewhere before that will be kind of the limit of being able to have this tremendous productivity engine that we've seen over the last 20-30 years.
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And I said, "I hate the keyboard, because I never learned to type." He said, "Mike, You really can't call yourself a CEO and not use computers."
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But we'll find other very creative things to try to drive that same phenomena forward.
I think that medical science is the next technology area in the 21st century, the kind of impact that electronics and semiconductors have had in the 20th century.
You saw Intel's announcement with the 1 trillion instructions, calculations per second and that's not the end. You can multiply that number by a hundred between now and 2010. You put all that compute power behind the biosciences. There is going to be discovery and learning that is incomprehensible today. It will probably do for the quality of life and the economy what semiconductors did in the 20th century.
Cirrus Logic 公司是一家享有世界盛名为众多消费和工业市场开发高精度模拟和混合信号集成电路的半导体公司。音频和工业市场最受尊重的品牌如 Harman International、IO、Onkyo、Marantz、Panasonic、Philips、Pioneer、Samsung及Sony都采用了Cirrus Logic公司的技术。
Cirrus Logic 公司成立于1984年，总部位于德克萨斯州奥斯汀市。Cirrus Logic 公司是一家无工厂化半导体公司，拥有900多项专利，服务于全球3000多个最终客户，为他们提供了600多种产品。
Cirrus Logic 公司的产品包括适用于消费、专业和车载娱乐市场的模拟和混合信号音频IC，以及适用于工业应用如工业测量、分析仪器、民用设施、数字电表，以及地震测量系统的高精度模拟和混合信号集成电路。Cirrus Logic 公司同时为消费和工业市场提供各种嵌入式处理器IC，例如适用于消费和专业用音频设备的音频最佳化数字信号处理器和基于ARM的嵌入式处理器。
2007年5月21日，Cirrus Logic 公司今天宣布，任命Jason Rhode博士为公司新任总裁兼首席执行官。Jason Rhode博士现年37岁，原为Cirrus Logic公司混合信号音频产品部副总裁兼总经理。
Rhode博士于1995年加盟Cirrus Logic公司，担任模拟设计工程师，并于2004年12月开始负责公司的混合信号音频产品线。在任职总经理期间，Rhode先生重振了Cirrus Logic公司模拟和混合信号转换器及接口产品线，为用户、专家及汽车音频提供了更为先进的应用性能。此前，Rhobe 先生担任模拟和混合信号产品线的市场总监。
Cirrus Logic公司董事会主席Mike Hackworth先生表示：“在做出此决定之前，我们也面试了众多申请此职位的外部候选人。然而，董事会最终认为公司很幸运能在内部拥有众多卓越的领导者。无论在技术领域还是业务领域，Jason博士都具备丰富的专业知识，因此得到了董事会的一致认同和青睐，并最终促使董事会做出该决定。Rhode先生卓具远见，工作热情且兢兢业业，他有足够的能力将公司的发展推入一个新纪元。并且在公司现有的基础上，将公司发展成为模拟和混合信号半导体行业的领先供应商。”
Rhode先生表示：“在过去几年中，Cirrus Logic公司不断努力，致力于将公司发展成能持续盈利、具备良好的资产负债情况和强大的知识产权组合，并且不断推出极具竞争力产品的公司，公司的这种努力成效显著。我非常高兴能有此机会，在此坚实的基础上能够为公司的进一步发展略尽绵薄之力。”
作为新任总裁兼首席执行官，Rhode先生将统筹管理Cirrus Logic公司在全球的运营，包括所有的产品部门、设计中心以及运营和销售团队的工作。
Rhode先生拥有美国北卡罗莱纳州立大学的电气工程博士和硕士学位，在圣迭戈州立大学也获得了电气工程专业理学士学位。同时，作为IEEE的成员，Rhode先生已经在混合信号技术领域公布了19项美国专利。
关于Cirrus Logic公司
Cirrus Logic面对广泛的家用和工业用市场研发高精度、模拟类型丰富的混合信号集成电路产品。以其品种繁多的模拟混合信号专利产品为基础，Cirrus Logic公司为家用商用音频、车载娱乐系统以及工业产品应用提供最优化的产品。公司总部位于美国德克萨斯州奥斯汀市，并在欧洲、日本以及亚洲设有分支机构。详情敬请访问www.cirrus.com。
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