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MMI Early days
I joined MMI in June of 1970. We were expecting our firstborn, and he arrived just after I started work. I had been working as a supervising engineer in the process development group at Signetics.
I want to talk a little bit about Zeev Drori here, because most people know him by reputation only. I had interviewed with him and Bob Schwartz (VP ops) and accepted a position as integration and diffusion engineer. Then I decided it was too risky and changed my mind. Bob asked me to come in one more time (I never did figure out why they had such a high opinion of me; I must have had a secret admirer at Signetics).
I'll never forget this last interview with Zeev. He looked at me with those glittering black eyes and exclaimed "Mike! Leave mother Signetics! We're with you, we're for you, we're going to stick by you!!" Well, no one had ever talked to me like that before, and I had to take the job.
I remember that Bill Moss and Paul Franklin were there, as were Diana Coburn (hope that's right - in mask design). I have never met anyone more patient than Bill. I knew diddley about real circuits, even though I am an electrical engineer. They weren't teaching the kind of stuff we were building yet!. Anyway, Bill would patiently sit down with me and explain what he wanted with the process and why. He never made me feel like a dummy, and working with him was a privilege.
We had the first, or one of the first anyway, 3 micron epi processes in the world. Gene Conner and I debated whether AMD was first, but we were actually shipping in January of 1971. The first part was an 8K ROM - huge density at the time. I had been working on the integration for about a month; we had gotten out 2-3 lots and nothing worked. Chuck Schmitz (design) and I looked at the wafers and they looked good. Chuck was saying "Mike, I don't know why these things won't sort. It seems to be working on the bench". I was tearing my hair out by this time; I didn't know what to do, and hated the idea of letting those wonderful people down. So I went to Bob, and he and I came in the following morning, Saturday, at 5:30 to get on the tester. As usual we were getting zero yield.
I'll never forget what happened next. Bob asked Joe McDowell (test) what he was using for his input low and Joe said "0.7 volts". Bob said, let's try grounding the low inputs. Joe somewhat reluctantly agreed. I was pacing back and forth in the test area. Suddenly Bob said "There's a partial". I couldn't believe my ears; stopped dead in my tracks. Then "There's a good one!!" I went over to the tester to make sure it was true, and when I saw my first bin 20 (those were the good ones) I positively went crazy. I was dancing around the test floor hooting and hollering, and exclaiming over and over "I knew it, I knew it". I was so happy I was crying. All the frustration of the last couple of weeks just blew out of my system in about 30 seconds. Daryl Foster (marketing) came down to congratulate us, and then a little later Zeev came down. He was delighted, and said "OK Mike, now we're really on the way". I can truly say that I would have done just about anything for Zeev and the rest of the people. I knew how much was riding on the success of this project (like the whole company) and I didn't want to let those people down. I believe this was probably the single greatest moment in my career; probably because it was the first one. What a thrill!
I'll give you one more story - we used to have these process development meetings chaired by Zeev, once/week. Once in a while someone would try to hold something back from Zeev or snow him. This was never a good idea! I remember the first time he got mad in one of these meetings. He was pounding on the table and yelling and I was thinking "This is great! I love this! I've never worked with anyone with this fire before". (Kind of like me). We had a lot of those meetings, and Zeev never got on my case. He knew that I would never lie to him, and if it was possible to do anything to make it better, I was already on it.
A few months later, they promoted me to Fab Manager! What an opportunity! I was now charged with setting up a fab to process the 3u epi wafers. I was 28.
About this time, Bob hired Art Stabenow, and a new era began at MMI, but that's another story….
Mike Rynne
January 2006
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