Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hennessy: A true equivalent to Silicon Valley will undoubtedly emerge in China
“So it is going to happen in China. I have no doubt about it.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hennessy: California and San Francisco would economically collapse without the tech sector
“You know, our cities and the state have such dramatic issues, and yet you pull out the high tech sector. I mean, the state and the city of San Francisco will collapse.”
Assertion Contradicted
Hennessy: CISC chip architectures lag far behind in energy efficiency
“So you care about energy efficiency even in these large data centers, and when it comes to that measure, the CISC architectures are far behind.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hennessy: The drain of AI faculty to industry will harm long-term innovation
“I think we're in a tricky position right now, especially around the machine learning AI area, where there are lots of faculty who are leaving, and that will hurt the industry in the long term, because that means we're eating the sea corn.”
What-if
Hennessy: Silicon Valley's dominance has widened despite expectations of rival U.S. hubs
“If you had asked me 1520 years ago, will there be another Silicon Valley in the U.S., I would have said yes, for sure. In fact, just the opposite has happened. The Valley's lead has gotten bigger.”
Opinion
Hennessy: For-profit higher education fails to deliver real value to students
“The for-profit industry, unfortunately, in the higher education space doesn't deliver a lot of value, so you end up with lots of students who are not able to use their education to get ahead.”
Insight
Hennessy: Technology is the sole path to lower education costs
“We've got to figure out how to deliver a high-quality education, not decrease the quality in order to just get the cost down, but hold the quality up while reducing the cost, and the only way I know how to do that is by using technology.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hennessy: Early RISC fragmentation allowed Intel to retain microprocessor market dominance
“Rather than the industry converging on one risk architecture, they converged on three or four. That gave Intel a real lead up because they didn't have to beat anyone. They had to kind of beat these little three or four.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hennessy: The Apple iPhone was the true tipping point for RISC dominance
“Yeah, the iPhone was really the taking-off point. Some of the earlier Nokia phones began to use the technology, but then when the iPhone came along... Boom.”
Assertion Supported
Hennessy: Power is the second largest cost in large data centers
“The fascinating thing people don't realize is that after the cost of the physical servers themselves, The second biggest cost in a large data center is power.”
Insight
Hennessy: Professors who start companies become better teachers and researchers
“My experience is the faculty members I know at Stanford have gone out and started companies, are better researchers, they're better teachers, they're all around better because they have a wider range of experience.”
Insight
Hennessy: Startups relocate to Silicon Valley due to executive talent scarcity elsewhere
“I remember a startup founded at Mark's alma mater, University of Illinois, and great group of people, they could hire great young engineers because it's one of the best engineering schools in the country, but they couldn't get the kind of middle and upper leve…”
Assertion Supported
Hennessy: Stanford set zero tuition for families earning under $100,000 a year
“We decide we need a very simple message, right? Your family makes less than a 100,000 dollars a year. Your tuition at Stanford is zero.”
Insight
Hennessy: Interdisciplinary education cannot substitute for deep core domain knowledge
“I don't believe that multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary things are a substitute for some deep domain knowledge. I'm a firm believer that you start with deep domain knowledge and then you build on top of that.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hennessy: Most interesting unsupervised learning applications are in natural sciences, not business
“And the space where that works, sort of unsupervised learning, is such a small part of the giant ML space. It's relatively small. And most of its interesting applications are in the natural science world, not in real world applications.”
Assertion Supported
Hennessy: Bell Labs and Xerox missed major economic gains from key inventions
“Bell Labs and AT&T were not the major beneficiaries of the discovery of the transistor. Xerox was not the major beneficiary of the discoverer of modern personal computing, right?”
Insight
Hennessy: Universities naturally transfer technology to society via student graduation
“That's why universities are the ideal place to do this kind of work, because society benefits. Universities do technology transfer in a very natural way. It's called graduation.”
Insight
Hennessy: Hardware breakthroughs take much longer to show impact than software
“Many times when you find a fundamental breakthrough, its importance may take a really long time to emerge, particularly in the hardware sector. It moves so much slower than software.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hennessy: IBM and DEC missed microprocessors by building increasingly complex machines
“They were building machines which were getting increasingly complicated rather than simpler. And they missed the whole importance of the microprocessor and VLSI and how we completely changed the industry.”
Assertion Supported
Hennessy: Global RISC processor chip volume exceeds 50 billion units
“Oh, more than that. Probably fifty billion.”
Insight
Hennessy: Foundational tech startups must target underdogs seeking a competitive advantage
“Companies are always a little reluctant to take a risk on a startup, particularly with something like a new architecture, which really is a long commitment. So what you had to do was find companies who felt like they needed a leg up. Over the other players in …”
Insight
Hennessy: Leaders facing a crisis should execute tough cuts quickly
“If you have a crisis and you've got to take a tough step, do it quickly, get it over with, and move through. Reset the clock so you can Then charge ahead.”
Insight
Hennessy: Top decisions in complex organizations are always gray and ambiguous
“In a complex organization, all decisions are gray when they get to the top. And so you've got to get comfortable making decisions, making calls in that situation.”
Insight
Hennessy: Commercialization flexibility gives universities a major recruiting edge for faculty
“So you're a young person, you've got multiple faculty offers, you might be interested someday in taking your technology out. Where's the place to come? Well, it's pretty obvious where the place to come is, and that's a big benefit to the university in terms of…”
John Hennessy