Vinod Dham is an inventor, entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is popularly known as the Father of the Pentium chip, for his contribution to the development of highly successful Pentium processors from Intel. He is a mentor, advisor and investor; and sits on the boards of many companies including promising startups funded through his India based fund – Indo US Venture Partners,where he is the founding Managing Director.
Vinod Dham’s accomplishment as the “Father of Pentium” and as an Indian-American technology pioneer from Silicon Valley, is being celebrated at a first-ever exhibition on South Asians in the National Museum of Natural History at the storied Smithsonian in Washington DC, highlighting Indian-Americans who have helped shape America.
Vinod Dham was born in 1950. His father was a member of the army civilian department who had moved from Rawalpindi to India during thePartition of India. Dham did B.E. degree in Electrical Engineering from the prestigious Delhi College of Engineering in 1971 at the age of 21.
After completing his B.E. degree in Electrical Engineering (with an emphasis on Electronics Engg) from Delhi College of Engineering (now known as Delhi Technological University) in 1971, he joined a Delhi-based semiconductor company called Continental Devices as Engineer. In 1975, he left this job and went to US University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, Ohio – USA, to pursue a MS degree in Electrical Engineering, where he specialised in Solid State Electronics. After completing his MSEE degree in 1977, he joined NCR Corporation at Dayton, Ohio,as Engineer where he did cutting edge work in developing advanced Non-Volatile Memories. He then joined Intel,as Engineer where he led the development of the world famous Pentium processor. He is called the “Father of Pentium” for his role in the development of the Pentium processor. He is also one of the co-inventors of Intel’s first Flash memory technology (ETOX).He rose to the position of vice-president of Micro processor Group at Intel.
He left Intel in 1995, and joined a startup NexGen, which was subsequently acquired byAMD. Dham played an instrumental role in the launch of K6 – the “Pentium killer” processor at rival AMD. He held vice president position of AMD’s Computation Products Group. He then went on to lead a nascent startup, Silicon Spice in April 1998, which he redirected to build a VOIP Chip and later sold it to Broadcom in 2000. He then launched an incubator NewPath Ventures, where he co – founded companies with an objective of using India’s emerging talent in chip design for R&D. He is currently a Managing Director and founder of Indo US Venture Partners, an early stage India focused fund that he founded after NewPath. Dham has over the years been a Board member and an advisor to dozens of private and public companies.
In Feb 2015 Dham announced his return to entrepreneurship as the Co Founder and CEO of Acadgild, on online educational platform he co-founded along with India’s storied entrepreneur duo – Krishnan Ganesh and Meena Ganesh of Tutor Vista fame. Acadgild aims to teach just about anybody , including a class 10 student, software programming that is relevant to today’s rapidly evolving digital world. Unlike many existing online courses that rely on videos, Acadgild provides live mentoring and hands-on engagement for building real applications for its students. It will also include building two applications, thus preparing the students for job ready skills and a more effective way for their perspective employers to evaluate them.
Dham and his wife are donors to many causes in the US and India. He has been a trustee of American India Foundation (AIF) since 2001 along with many other noted luminaries. Former President Bill Clinton serves as the honorary Chair. In July 2006 he was named to the Board of Directors and was appointed Chair of the Digital Equalizer Program (DE) with a mission to provide underprivileged children in India with the opportunity to enhance their learning through the use of digital technology in a scalable and sustainable manner. As Chair of the DE Program, he led the program’s strategic direction and growth. He has been actively involved in the fund-raising and was awarded the Visionary Award for his DE work by Montek Singh Ahluwalia in 2010.
Dham also donated to and is involved with Teach AIDS where an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the fields of education, public health, communications and medicine have been working together to develop pedagogically grounded, research-based, rich-media applications to promote HIV/AIDS prevention despite numerous social and cultural barriers. Dham and his wife Sadhana, who is also on the Board of Advisors, have also been long-time supporters of Home of Hope, a charity with a mission to provide the basic necessities of life to orphans and underprivileged children in India.
- Pune, Maharashtra
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