Chip passes the test of time/ Smithsonian honoring innovation that

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), May 22, 2001 | by Chris Walsh

Colorado Springs has seen its share of prominent technology innovators and entrepreneurs over the years.

Nikola Tesla, the eccentric inventor whose work led to vacuum tubes, fluorescent lights and X-rays, briefly made his home in the area a century ago.

Seymour Cray, widely known as the father of the supercomputer, founded two companies in the Springs before he died in 1996. And John McAfee, who developed the popular anti-virus software that bears his last name, lives in Woodland Park.

But the city has another, less visible, claim to high-tech fame.

Colorado Springs is home to several engineers who developed an innovative computer chip based on technology invented in Kansas in the early 1980s. The chip was so important to the technology industry, the Smithsonian Institution accepted a replica of it a decade ago as part of its collection on the history of integrated circuits.

The chip, which allows computers to store and retrieve data and work with peripherals such as printers, is now ubiquitous in high- end computer systems and has become an industry standard for such technology.

In a ceremony tonight in San Jose, Calif., celebrating the 20th anniversary of the technology, the Smithsonian will accept a replica of the seventh generation of the chip - a souped-up, speedier version of the original, developed by LSI Logic Corp.

The chip may be part of a traveling Smithsonian exhibit in 2004 on global communications, and the technology could eventually be displayed at the National Museum of American History.

A team of engineers in Colorado Springs, including several of the originals who worked on the first chip, was integral to its development.

"The work done in Colorado Springs on SCSI throughout the years has been extremely vital to its success," said David Steele, director of product planning for storage at LSI in the Springs.

Steele began working on the technology in the early '80s and is still involved with its development.

"It was here that the technology became commercially available, and that's when it really took off. And we've been pushing and leading development on it since."

Called Small Computer System Interface, or SCSI, the technology enables a computer to transmit data to and from a hard drive, allowing the system to store and retrieve information.

The technology also enables a computer to 'talk' to peripherals such as printers, scanners and CD-ROMs.

SCSI, pronounced "scuzzy" by those in the industry, was actually created in Wichita, Kan., by several engineers who worked for what was then NCR Corp. and by a few scientists from the now-defunct Shugart Associates.

After producing the first line of SCSI chips, NCR moved development of the technology to the company's operations in the Springs.

It was tweaked and modified by Steele and another engineer to be mass produced and sold commercially.

In the mid-80s, the chip got its first real break: Computer giant Apple Corp. said it would use SCSI for is Macintosh line of computers.

The technology became an industry standard in 1986 and is now found in about 90 percent of servers. Standardization of the technology used to create the chip has kept prices in check and given consumers and businesses more options.

John Lohmeyer, one of the early pioneers of SCSI in Wichita who now works on the technology in the Springs, remembers working on the technology for NCR in a barren conference room.

The room - in an unoccupied, unfinished area of the building - had little heat in the winter and an uncarpeted floor.

The room was also lined with "white boards," where the team would write design notes and take snapshots of what they wrote before it was erased.

At that time, Lohmeyer said, neither he nor NCR recognized the potential of SCSI.

"I certainly didn't think I would still be working on it in the year 2001, probably because I never worked on anything that lasted that long," Lohmeyer said.

Polaroid photos of the white boards are now posted on the Smithsonian's Web site, www.si.edu.

Lohmeyer and Steele said they take pride in seeing the technology last so long - and make it into the Smithsonian for the second time.

"I've been a part of this from the beginning, and it's gratifying and rewarding to see how far it has come," Steele said.

The seventh generation of the chip, which will be released in several months, was developed by a team of more than 100 workers at LSI in Colorado Springs. Milpitas, Calif.-based LSI bought NCR's local operations, which had been sold several times and operated under the name Symbios Inc., in 1998.

The new chip represents a significant evolution in the technology, which made it attractive to the Smithsonian, said Nance Briscoe, a specialist in solid-state electronics for the museum.

While the first commercial SCSI had 20,000 transistors and ran at 5 megabytes a second, the newest chip has 8 million transistors and runs at 320 megabytes a second - meaning it's faster, more efficient and more powerful.

"This is the accumulation of many trials and errors," Briscoe said. "This technology has really blossomed into something very unique."