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The Times Tech Podcast

Frore's Seshu Madhavapeddy: "Centuries-old tech and the tyranny of heat"

The Times Tech Podcast

Will Morley

Business, Unknown, Technology

4.9654 Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2023

⏱️ 48 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Seshu Madhavapeddy co-founder and chief executive of Frore Systems, to talk about why our devices underperform and we don;t know it (4:20), the problem with fans (8:00), inventing a new chip (13:00), how it works (17:30), why he started the company (20:30), getting into an IIT in India (21:40), leaving Nortel at the peak of the dotcom boom (26:00), startup lessons (28:10), raising $116 million (33:00), getting Frore’s chips into computers (34:50), the recruiting challenge (41:40), and his worst day (44:00).

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Yeah. Technology. What is it all about?

0:04.7

The picture is very simple. Are you ready to change the world? Or do you want a safe job?

0:09.7

Everybody here could easily walk and get a job that pays multiples in cash in any of these Fortune 10 companies in the Silicon Valley.

0:20.6

But the level of challenge and the creativity and the sheer exhilaration of solving a hard problem

0:26.8

is catnip to Danny in the Valley.

0:46.2

We are back.

0:47.1

It is 2023.

0:49.4

I'm full of beans.

0:51.1

Ready to take this year by the horns.

0:54.5

How was your break?

0:55.7

I hope it was as restful and as recharging as mine was.

0:59.7

But let's get, let's get right into it to the first episode of 2023.

1:03.1

And I'm going to start with a question.

1:06.9

Did you know that your laptop is lying to you? That your laptop is lying to you?

1:11.6

That your smartphone is lying to you? Well, they are.

1:15.6

So you know how every model of any gadget these days, the new ones come out,

1:19.6

and they talk about the processing power of the latest chip, that powers it, etc., etc.

1:24.6

But for years now, most of those pronouncements have effectively been false. Because when

1:30.9

chips do their work, they heat up. And if they heat up too much, they melt. And you don't have

1:37.4

a functioning laptop or phone anymore. So the industry's answer has been to throttle their performance,

1:43.3

to make them run at partial even half their

1:45.7

capacity.

...

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