1996 PEP Press Conference in Tokyo- Presenting our new chip processor “Autobahn” the fastest at the time serial communication, following our press Release in Las Vegas.
Ever since I started with VME 3U technology my company was facing serious technologic disadvantage from boards VME 6U of the Big guys like Motorola, Force and others. Their access to motherboard was over 2 (not as in mine one) 98 pin DIN connectors. This need to access other resources connected to Motherboard, gave them double advantage in performance on the Signal level, while our compact, boards were better handling temperatures/heating, and especially shock and vibration resistance thus keeping up the competition away from our fine and uniquely closed market. But after couple of years chewing on the problem, we came with a simple solution: on to motherboard, 2 pins (21 and 23) on the J2 connector were assigned but not used. We decided to use them for signal processing at extremely high clock speed of 3GHz. To avoid creating the crosstalk effect the signal voltage was restricted to 0,5 V.
Prototypes we built, tests were hopeful on a prototype level, Sample chips were produced using old Moto production facility were old VME boards were tested in Munich. Patent was registered with the Munich patent registry in 1995. Small foundry was used in Munich to produce sample batch. Initially Motorola Semiconductors was willing to produce full scale production line. The rules in this business require however that for a production series a Second Source was to be secured, in case short of supplies, for our part PEP was not in the chip business, thus a guy from Munich Stefan Krause was now CEO of our new subsidiary. Every time a new chip design appears on the market a suitable foundry has to be located and contracted to supply the markets, and since the break and or retooling happens a second foundry can take up the production immediately. The preferred foundry was to be Motorola Semiconductors with its CEO, Eric M. Thus, the need to make another pitch to Toshiba in Tokyo. The delegation was assembled with me and Josef Kreidl, a commercial rep from our bank in Munich and one from Zug, Switzerland, plus VITA (VME International Trade Association) CEO Ray Alderman from Phoenix, AZ.
The negotiations with executives at Toshiba were scheduled to take 3 working days excluding one Sunday, which was very nice for a May stroll into the old town and a park, full of prancing school children enjoying their ice cream cones. Oddity to me was that while standing at the ice cream counter it was obvious that the most popular flavour was green tea sorbet, I hated green tee myself. Eric Mass was thirsty, and we stopped at one of those refrigerators like in cantinas where you could get something cold and another dispenser with hot coffee or tea to drink. Eric reached his pocket, pulled out his credit card and ordered a can of "ice tea", guessing the menu completely in Japanese. In a moment we’ve heard the rumble of drink can making its way from the storage and into the chute and finally landed into the pickup tray. Eric reached for the can, picked it up -and dropped in on the gravel in front of the dispenser. To our eyes asking “why” he replied: the can was piping hot!
After reviewing this event, I am still surprised that our market segmentation in the so called West (funny how this applies to Japan), we still use separate dispensers for hot and for cold drinks 25+ years after the event. In the West they stay bulky and would make sore eyes if placed when and where they are needed. The Japanese dispensers are extremely compact (no more than 1cubic meter), being easy on the eyes of passers by.
The presentation for the press conference attracted a good overview of journalists and developers and business personalities, each posing good number of questions highly advanced knowledge of possible use of our Autobahn chip. One of the most challenging questions came from a guy named Satoshi Nakamoto, who asked us challenging questions for over half an hour, before he left, leaving no business card saying he was who apparently has created Bitcoin, the crypto currency and block chain code & applications. Now almost 20 years later the Bitcoin (with its units called satoshi even today) was scrubbed, tested as a legal tender in San Salvador and Iran (payments for child and medical supplies from US), is a scheme promising high returns, no tax jurisdiction for now, etc. Wiki tells us a story of another world’s entity appearing in 2006 (~), who brought Bitcoin to the earthlings. All these may be rumors and require verification.
We have never met again. His email was run on the Dark Internet as per CERN (Switzerland) and my inquiry led me to believe that his invention was removed from the net and rebuilt in elsewhere, for several years, and tested later as mentioned in a paragraph above. This may be a rumor as well.
The Autobahn processor was accepted by developers immediately and requests for specifications arrived at PEP daily. Celebrations at PEP Modular Computers took long time, and we had chance to gather new designs, analyses of responses from coopetitors were no coming as expected.
This is in my view a response from competitors and not coopetitors, who continue using this strategies wo win business. Yet this was long not the end of Autobahn. It gave new and better life for video on powerful processors, often multiprocessors in video, which used to be closely attached to video camera processors. In harsh environment Autobahn enabled placing video camera near the observed event while computer processing that video, was placed at length, enabling observation easy to record and process it back where the computers were protected leaving full processing power at its highest performance. The life of Autobahn processor as the Top speed performer continued after I moved to different fields. Recently I was invited to meet several partners at
