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| View Larger Image | The Pentium Chronicles: The People, Passion, and Politics Behind Intel's Landmark Chips (Practitioners)
by Robert P. Colwell
| | List Price: | $31.95 | | Price: | $28.75 | | You Save: | $3.20 (10%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 311529 | | Studio: | Wiley-IEEE Computer Society Pr | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 208 | | Publication Date: | December 23, 2005 | | Publisher: | Wiley-IEEE Computer Society Pr |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
The Pentium Chronicles describes the architecture and key decisions that shaped the P6, Intel's most successful chip to date. As author Robert Colwell recognizes, success is about learning from others, and Chronicles is filled with stories of ordinary, exceptional people as well as frank assessments of "oops" moments, leaving you with a better understanding of what it takes to create and grow a winning product. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 10 reviews)
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Good advice and inside view... 
I thought of this book as a tome of helpful advice for any project manage that has to work on a project that veers far into the unknown. The author was the Chief Architect for the P6 (Pentium Pro) microprocessor. This was a radically new type of processor that broke from previous chip architectures. The team was required to explore untested ideas but at the same time bring them to an operable design. This required considerable balancing and deft handling of various stumbling blocks. The author presents a lot of observations on how to accomplish this. It was also very interesting, for a person who is interested in microprocessors, to see where exactly time is spent in these massive projects. The author gives lots of technical details, but I would have like a bit more. Of course, the intention of this book was as a project management guide, so that isn't necessarily bad.
July 16, 2007 | |
thin 
I was looking forward to a history of the depth of, say "Into the Black" about JPL by Peter Westwick, a professional historian. The Pentium Chronicles is thin. I think it's trying mostly to be a project management book. The context is poorly drawn, the technical issues are nearly completely unexplained, and the stories are told without zest. The sidebars make the book feel like it is meant to be bought at an airport and discarded to the next passenger. Colwell is undoubtedly a fine computer architect but his writing leaves a lot to be desired, at least in this book.
April 09, 2007 | |
Project Management Education
This is an excellent case study about Intel's P6 project -- that became the Pentium Pro and part of the lineage for a number of other processors. The author provides the story of compromises made while the project proceded and the corporate politics endured at Intel. He also discusses the Pentium flaw episode and provides a technical rationale that thay may have led to that unrelated debacle. It is fun to read about some of the technical aspects of this project. One flaw to the story is the lack of additional information on why Intel settled out of court and paid millions of dollars for alleged patent infringement accusations relating to the P6 project. The book is surprisingly upbeat considering the author no longer works at Intel. If you like this book, Brian Bagnall's "On the Edge" about the rise and fall of Commodore computer is an excellent follow-up.
March 06, 2007 | |
How a big project comes together. 
On the first page of this book Dr. Colwell gets his marching orders from his boss: 'Your job is to beat the P5 chip by a factor of two on the same process technology. Any Questions.'
'Three,' he replied. 'What's a P5?' What's the process technology plans? Where's the bathroom.'
The P5 became the Pentium chip. The process technology doesn't matter in this book as it was the same. And he found the bathroom.
Dr. Colwell's new chip, the P6 came to the market first as the Pentium Pro, the same basic design was subsequently modified as the basic core for the Pentium II, Pentium III, Celeron, Xeon, and the current Centrino products.
But the details of the chip aren't the strong point of the book. It's the organization and structure of a how a big development team works. From the little details like finding an unused storage room to use as a conference room where the blackboards wouldn't get erased, to hiring, firing and getting the product out.
I can't help but compare this with Tracy Kidders book 'The Soul of a New Machine' written twenty or so years ago. Kidder was a better writer, but Colwell was the one in charge, making the whole thing happen. I would have liked to see a little more technical detail, but I've been in this business a long time and have more interests along these lines than the average reader. As it is, it is an excellent book on project management and I enjoyed it very much.
March 20, 2006 | |
Solid, practical perspective
As may be likely with many readers, I first heard of Mr. Colwell from his IEEE Computer columns, of which I was big fan. Several times I was tempted to send him comments about the insights and occasional humor, but I never did. The same kind of writing and attitude is clearly on display in "Chronicles".
Because other reviewers mentioned "Soul of a New Machine," I agree that it is hard to escape, even though the two books are much different. When I was a young engineer in the early 80s, "Soul" was (and is) a great book. I did not have the experience to grasp some lessons to be learned from the story, and a 1980s version of "Chronicles" would not have hit home, either.
However, Mr. Colwell is completely believable in his anecdotes and in the presentation of the big picture, the project, and countless details both technical and personal. Experienced engineers will no doubt see themselves, their colleagues, and their projects in one form or another. I don't mean just the "Dilbert" moments and inevitable personal clashes, but also the serious business and technical challenges that any complex project must face. I found myself nodding in agreement again and again with his conclusions and advice.
Two reasons I liked Mr. Colwell's columns are that he is not just a techno-geek and that an interesting feisty personality showed through. You see that feistiness at times in the book with stories of taking on the powers that be, for better or worse, without feeling like you are listening to someone covering his tracks to make himself look good. The true engineer comes through, with enough polish to be around executives and to be allowed with customers.
March 05, 2006 | |
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