Richard Fong:  

I was born in Sacramento as my father was. My paternal grandfather arrived in Sacramento in 1915 from what is now called Guangdong Province in China. My father served in the U.S. Army in the Philippines during World War II. After the war, my father met and married my mother in Hong Kong and brought her back to Sacramento. I attended schools in San Juan Unified from kindergarten through high school. After graduating from El Camino High School, I attended American River Junior College (now American River College) for two years before transferring to UC Berkeley with two scholarships which covered my tuition and room and board. My time at Berkeley was marked by campus unrest and anti-Vietnam War protests. I graduated from UC Berkeley with honors with a Bachelor of Science degree in EECS (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science). I followed up with an Master of Science degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University. The salary offer I received after graduating from Stanford was among the 10% for Stanford graduates that year. The company (AMI or American Microsystems, Inc.) that hired me offered me a choice of two positions: MOS/IC (Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Integrated Circuit) design engineer or MOS device physicist. I chose the design engineering position, which turned out to be the better choice since opportunities turned out to be much greater. I knocked out three semiconductor chip designs in the first 9 months I was at AMI, and they all worked on first silicon! I was a natural born chip design engineer, and I thought I had the coolest job in the world! I worked for several technology companies in Silicon Valley, including Intel, Hewlett-Packard, and three semiconductor startup companies. At Intel, I was the lead circuit design engineer for the Execution Unit for the 286 microprocessor project. Most of the companies I worked for tried to push me into management, but I resisted since I liked designing chips so much. Toward the latter part of my career, I did finally move into management, but I will always think of myself, first and foremost, as an engineer. I am now retired after an interesting and challenging career working in a dynamic, fast-paced, and innovative industry. Two of the three semiconductor startups I joined went public, enabling me to retire early very comfortably. I married a Laotian lady 14 years my junior who escaped Laos after the country fell to the Communists in 1975. She and other family members strong enough to do so swam across the Mekon...Expand for more