Born: 1950 (age 71 years), Pune
Vinod Dham is an engineer, entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is known as ‘Father of the Pentium Chip’ for his contribution to the development of Intel’s Pentium micro-processor He is a mentor
Vinod Dham is popularly known as the father of the Pentium processor.
Born in 1950 in Pune, he had his initial schooling in Pune. . .His father was a member of the army civilian department who had moved from Rawalpindi, Punjab, Pakistan to India during the Partition of India. Dham graduated with a BE degree in Electrical Engineering from Delhi College of Engineering in 1971 at the age of 21. Thereafter he joined Delhi-based semiconductor manufacturer Continental Devices. At the age of 25, he left his family in Delhi, India to study for MS degree in Physics (Solid State) in the US, arriving with just $8 in his pocket.
In 1975, Vinod Dham went to the US and did his Masters in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati. After completing his Masters in 1977, Vinod Dham joined the National Cash Register (NCR) at Dayton, Ohio. Vinod was a team member of the NCR’s memory design group. He received many patents for his work at NCR.
Vinod Dham joined Intel in January 1990, Vinod was in-charge of developing the 586 or Pentium processor. He worked relentlessly on the project and the Pentium processor was a big hit in the market. Vinod Dham rose up the corporate ladder and reached the position of the Vice President of Intel’s Microprocessor Products Group. When Dham had joined Intel Co., it had $1 million revenue. By the time he left in 1995, Intel’s revenues had soared to $16.2 billion. He quit Intel in 1995.

Thereafter, Vinod joined NexGen, a start-up firm as Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President.. When Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) acquired NexGen in 1996, Vinod Dham looked after the development of AMD’s famous K6 Processor, world’s fastest personal computer microprocessor. Later on he quit AMD.
In December 2001, Dham made a trip to India where he met several businesses. He was impressed by the success of India’s IT industry based on off-shoring of US software development to India and was wondering what it would take to recreate a similar US-India model for hardware and chip design off shoring to India. With seed capital from other venture capitalists in April 2002; he co-founded an incubator New Path Ventures. In 1999; he was named one of the top 100 Most Influential Asian Americans of the decade. In 2000,he was appointed to serve on the President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders by President Bill Clinton.

Presently, Vinod Dham is the chairman, president and chief executive officer of Silicon Spice, a communications technology development firm.
Dham and his wife Sadhana are donors to many charities in the US and India. He has been a trustee of the American India Foundation (AIF) since 2001. Former President Bill Clinton serves as the honorary Chair.[30] In July 2006; he was named to Board of Directors and was appointed Chair of the Digital Equalizer(DE)Program[31] with a mission to provide underprivileged children in India with the opportunity to enhance their learning through 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 Ahluwaliain 2010.