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Hewlett-Packard was an electronic engineering, semiconductor, and computing company from the beginning (the first product they sold was an audio distortion anal

Hewlett-Packard was an electronic engineering, semiconductor, and computing company from the beginning (the first product they sold was an audio distortion analyzer, it used a creative circuit to achieve high performance at minimum cost), they used to do serious and innovative R&D. There were the glorious days when Hewlett-Packard makes state-of-art test equipment and semiconductor devices, developed in-house enterprise computer systems like HP-UX system and PA-RISC CPUs, first-generation of scientific and programmable handheld calculators, etc., not just today's customer printers and laptops. e.g. I recently found a datasheet of an IC in an amateur radio gear, it were really the glorious days. Those chips with an HP logo (or a Motorola logo) are really cool. > The INA series of MMICs is fabricated using HP’s 25 GHz f_max, ISOSAT™-I silicon bipolar process which uses nitride self-alignment, submicrometer lithography, trench isolation, ion implantation, gold metallization and polyimide intermetal dielectric and scratch protection to achieve excellent performance, uniformity and reliability. Around 2000s, the EE & semiconductor department became an independent company, Agillent, and later Keysight. I think the last major innovation at HP was probably memristor that was supposed to be the next evolution of digital logic and storage, and HP claimed that it was developing a memristor computer system. Unfortunately, it failed to materialize.

Merrill 7y ago
One of the last innovations at HP was the work on Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing and Very Long Instruction Word architectures that led to the Itanium IA-64 processors produced by Intel. By putting the burden of scheduling parallelism on the compiler, does the EPIC design avoid speculative execution vulnerabilities, or did Intel implement Itanium with the same flaws?
willis936 7y ago
HP? You mean Agilent-Keysight-HP? :p They’ve split up into companies that are widely successful in each of their individual fields.
- gmueckl 7y ago
  The multiple splits and name changes didn't help brand recognition, at least on my end. I remember HP lab equipment being highly impressive and warranting its price. But I consistently fail to make the connection that Agilent amd Keysight products are the successors to that.
  - willis936 7y ago
    I agree. The rebrand to Keysight is the worst. Agilent was a good name by the time they split. Agilent still exists in medical but I know much less about that. I think everyone who works in test & measurement knows the big brands and knows keysight. All of the reps, culture, and products stayed the same. The rebranding I’ll never understand is Fujitsu -> Socionext.
    - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
      > The rebranding I’ll never understand is Fujitsu -> Socionext. I have to look it up... This is stupid. If I see a Fujitsu chip on a board, I know the brand and may find it interesting. But if I see a Socionext chip, I'll think it's some random U.S. startup from California. I think there's a reason - Wikipedia says it's a joint venture of Fujitsu and Panasonic, so it makes sense for them to give it a new name, and it's common for these Japanese companies to choose a English name for global business (in the same way that NEC becomes Renesas due to the two reasons). But what a terrible name!
wtallis 7y ago
I'm well aware of the impressive achievements of the old HP. But I'm also aware that that era was already clearly over in the year 2000, and they were already a very different company from what their older reputation suggested. In 2000, there was no "collapse coming" for HP from anything like mismanagement or complacency; they weathered industry-wide troubles as well as any other company and didn't experience any personal catastrophes. If the next 20 years for Intel end up like the last 20 years for HP, then long-term investors will be quite satisfied.
cookiecaper 7y ago
HP was the Google of its day when H & P were in charge. People either retire or die eventually. What happens to Google when time claims Larry and/or Sergei? Not trying to besmirch or minimize early HP by comparing to Google -- probably better to use Musk/SpaceX or something -- but IMO this is the key takeaway that doesn't seem widely discussed. Innovative companies have innovative leaders with expert-level knowledge in their technical specialties. At some point, the MBAs take over, attempt to put it on autopilot, and it's all downhill from there.
- fyfy18 7y ago
  What about companies like IBM? The company was originally foundered in 1911, but you could say their heyday wasn't until half a century later (or even more), after the original founder had left.
  - Merrill 7y ago
    It was the unusual case of a competent son of the founder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Watson_Jr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Watson_Jr. >Although the initiative, and as such much of the credit for the birth of the information revolution, must go to Tom Jr., considerable courage was also displayed by his then aging father who, despite his long commitment to internal funding, backed his son to the hilt; reportedly with the words "It is harder to keep a business great than it is to build it."
  - emerongi 7y ago
    Not saying this happened at IBM, but sometimes correct people can be promoted into correct positions, in which case the company keeps going just fine. However, at some point any company is probably bound to promote wrong people, who will end up promoting/hiring the wrong people under them, eventually completely changing the course of the business. It seems like the death of a company is inevitable.
    - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
      > It feels like the death of a company is inevitable. Which, from a higher perspective, is good. As it breaks down monopolies and give way to more innovative new companies.

Merrill 7y ago

One of the last innovations at HP was the work on Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing and Very Long Instruction Word architectures that led to the Itanium IA-64 processors produced by Intel. By putting the burden of scheduling parallelism on the compiler, does the EPIC design avoid speculative execution vulnerabilities, or did Intel implement Itanium with the same flaws?

willis936 7y ago

HP? You mean Agilent-Keysight-HP? :p They’ve split up into companies that are widely successful in each of their individual fields.

gmueckl 7y ago
The multiple splits and name changes didn't help brand recognition, at least on my end. I remember HP lab equipment being highly impressive and warranting its price. But I consistently fail to make the connection that Agilent amd Keysight products are the successors to that.
- willis936 7y ago
  I agree. The rebrand to Keysight is the worst. Agilent was a good name by the time they split. Agilent still exists in medical but I know much less about that. I think everyone who works in test & measurement knows the big brands and knows keysight. All of the reps, culture, and products stayed the same. The rebranding I’ll never understand is Fujitsu -> Socionext.
  - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
    > The rebranding I’ll never understand is Fujitsu -> Socionext. I have to look it up... This is stupid. If I see a Fujitsu chip on a board, I know the brand and may find it interesting. But if I see a Socionext chip, I'll think it's some random U.S. startup from California. I think there's a reason - Wikipedia says it's a joint venture of Fujitsu and Panasonic, so it makes sense for them to give it a new name, and it's common for these Japanese companies to choose a English name for global business (in the same way that NEC becomes Renesas due to the two reasons). But what a terrible name!

wtallis 7y ago

I'm well aware of the impressive achievements of the old HP. But I'm also aware that that era was already clearly over in the year 2000, and they were already a very different company from what their older reputation suggested. In 2000, there was no "collapse coming" for HP from anything like mismanagement or complacency; they weathered industry-wide troubles as well as any other company and didn't experience any personal catastrophes. If the next 20 years for Intel end up like the last 20 years for HP, then long-term investors will be quite satisfied.

cookiecaper 7y ago

HP was the Google of its day when H & P were in charge. People either retire or die eventually. What happens to Google when time claims Larry and/or Sergei? Not trying to besmirch or minimize early HP by comparing to Google -- probably better to use Musk/SpaceX or something -- but IMO this is the key takeaway that doesn't seem widely discussed. Innovative companies have innovative leaders with expert-level knowledge in their technical specialties. At some point, the MBAs take over, attempt to put it on autopilot, and it's all downhill from there.

fyfy18 7y ago
What about companies like IBM? The company was originally foundered in 1911, but you could say their heyday wasn't until half a century later (or even more), after the original founder had left.
- Merrill 7y ago
  It was the unusual case of a competent son of the founder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Watson_Jr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Watson_Jr. >Although the initiative, and as such much of the credit for the birth of the information revolution, must go to Tom Jr., considerable courage was also displayed by his then aging father who, despite his long commitment to internal funding, backed his son to the hilt; reportedly with the words "It is harder to keep a business great than it is to build it."
- emerongi 7y ago
  Not saying this happened at IBM, but sometimes correct people can be promoted into correct positions, in which case the company keeps going just fine. However, at some point any company is probably bound to promote wrong people, who will end up promoting/hiring the wrong people under them, eventually completely changing the course of the business. It seems like the death of a company is inevitable.
  - segfaultbuserr 7y ago
    > It feels like the death of a company is inevitable. Which, from a higher perspective, is good. As it breaks down monopolies and give way to more innovative new companies.