In 1991, only a few individuals had Internet access. Those that did publish in on-line boards or e-mail buddies from dwelling usually accessed the Internet by way of phone line, their messages touring at a high pace of 14.4 kilobits per second. In the meantime, cable TV was rocketing in recognition. By 1991, sixty percent of U.S. households subscribed to a cable service; cable rollouts in the remainder of the world have been additionally selecting up pace.
Hypothetically, utilizing that rising cable community as an alternative of telephone strains for Web entry would dramatically enhance the pace of communications. And making cable TV itself digital as an alternative of analog would enable cable suppliers to hold many extra channels. The idea of how to do this—utilizing analog-to-digital converters and digital signal processing to translate the analog waveforms that journey on coaxial cable into digital type—was effectively established. However the cable modems required to implement such a digital broadband community weren’t on the mass market.
Enter Henry Samueli. In 1985, he had established a multidisciplinary analysis program on the College of California, Los Angeles, to develop chips for digital broadband. Over the following a number of years, he and his staff created all kinds of proof-of-concept chips demonstrating the important thing constructing blocks of high-performance digital modems. And in 1991, Samueli, alongside along with his UCLA grad scholar Henry Nicholas, based Broadcom Corp. to commercialize the expertise.
As we speak, the improvements in digital signal processing architectures pioneered at UCLA and Broadcom persist within the digital modems that allow each wired and wireless communications in our gadgets. For these advances, together with contributions to increasing science, expertise, engineering, and math (STEM) schooling, Samueli is the recipient of the 2025 IEEE Medal of Honor.
Henry Samueli
Present jobs:
Philanthropist, Chairman of Broadcom Inc.
Date of start:
20 September 1954
Birthplace:
Buffalo, N.Y.
Household:
Spouse, Susan; three youngsters; three grandchildren
Training:
BSEE 1975, MSEE 1976, Ph.D. 1980, all in electrical engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
First job:
Cashier and inventory boy in household’s liquor retailer
Greatest shock in profession:
The overwhelming success of Broadcom and the explosive development of the Web
Patents:
75
Favourite type of music:
Traditional rock, together with Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, Metallica, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones
Most up-to-date TV sequence watched:
“Lioness”
Favourite meals:
Chocolate
Favourite film:
The Godfather
Favourite nation:
Italy, for the individuals, the tradition, the meals, the surroundings
Favourite cities:
Paris, London, New York, Tokyo
Leisure actions:
E-biking, snowboarding, mountaineering, basketball
Pet peeves:
Disorganization and messes
Key organizational memberships:
IEEE, Marconi Society
Main awards:
IEEE Medal of Honor: “For pioneering analysis and commercialization of broadband communication and networking applied sciences, and promotion of STEM schooling,” IEEE Fellow, Marconi Fellow, member of the National Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Ellis Island Medal of Honor, Broadcom’s 2024 Emmy for “Pioneering Applied sciences Enabling Excessive-Efficiency Communications over Cable TV Techniques”
Earlier than the Cable Modem—Means Earlier than
Samueli began down the trail that might result in cable modems when he was in center college. However he wasn’t eager about a future profession when he enrolled in an electrical store class. It was simply that, he says, “electrical energy appeared type of mysterious, in contrast with steel or wooden.”
The instructor assigned a crystal radio undertaking, he remembers, “however wrapping a wire round a tube from rest room paper and connecting the wire to a crystal wasn’t that thrilling to me.” So he thumbed by means of an electronics catalog on the lookout for another. A
Graymark five-tube radio caught his eye. It took some convincing earlier than the instructor agreed to let him sort out the undertaking, which got here with sophisticated directions and concerned studying find out how to solder.
“I labored each night time,” Samueli says. “There have been lots of of connections that I needed to solder up. It took a full semester to construct it, and, on the finish, I introduced it into class, plugged it in, and sound got here out of it. I used to be completely blown away. And I actually made it my mission in life to determine how radios work.”
Samueli’s instructor was blown away as effectively. And what he mentioned crystallized Samueli’s future. “He informed me, ‘Henry, truthfully, I by no means ever thought you may do that. However clearly, you’ve received some particular presents. I feel you need to pursue electrical engineering as a profession. You’re going to do one thing huge sometime.’ ”
UCLA Takes Maintain—and By no means Lets Go
Samueli ultimately utilized to UCLA—a college with a great electrical engineering program and reasonably priced tuition that was near dwelling. He went straight by means of to a Ph.D. however, he says, didn’t actually perceive how radios labored till a couple of years past that.
After amassing his Ph.D. in 1980, Samueli joined TRW to work on protection communications tasks. He says he beloved each minute. “It’s an amazing alternative to study since you’re coping with superhigh tech, the best expertise on the time. And with an enormous funds, you’ll be able to construct very subtle issues,” he says.
Broadcom cofounders Henry Samueli [left] and Henry Nicholas pose in entrance of the corporate’s headquarters in Irvine, Calif., in 1999. Ted Soqui/Corbis/Getty Pictures
Samueli didn’t utterly go away the world of upper schooling. In his spare time, he taught a circuit-design class at
California State University, Northridge, after which a number of circuits and sign processing courses at UCLA. In 1985, UCLA supplied him an assistant professorship, and he left TRW, taking coworker Henry Nicholas with him as his first Ph.D. scholar.
The 2 fashioned the core of what would change into the multidisciplinary communications analysis program in UCLA’s Built-in Circuits and Techniques Laboratory. They collaborated with a number of college members within the electrical engineering and pc science division to develop digital modem chips.
“Chip design is a really advanced and broad self-discipline,” Samueli factors out. “There are analog designs, digital designs, a number of methods, varied architectures. Whereas such a multidisciplinary method is customary as we speak, it was pretty uncommon on the time.”
AT&T Bell Labs was main the world in digital-communications analysis, Samueli remembers, utilizing low-speed modems that communicated in the identical bandwidths because the human voice. The labs constructed these modems utilizing programmable digital sign processing chips from
Texas Instruments and others.
“It was a software-driven method to constructing digital sign processing,” Samueli says. “And it solely ran at data rates of tens of kilobits per second. Our problem was find out how to take these algorithms and make them run at tens of
megabits per second—one thousand instances sooner.”
Samueli and his colleagues concluded {that a} programmable structure utilizing software program was simply too sluggish. In order that they started investigating parallel architectures that would implement subtle algorithms on a single chip with no software program, simply devoted {hardware}. “That was our innovation. Again then, it was very novel,” he notes. “As we speak, it’s what makes AI processors work.”
UCLA researchers who specialised in analog sign processing collaborated with the group to combine high-speed analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters into the core capabilities of the chip—“actually breakthrough work,” Samueli says.
“I used to be completely blown away. And I actually made it my mission in life to determine how radios work.”— Henry Samueli
Samueli and his staff weren’t pondering patents whereas they have been doing this analysis. As teachers, their focus was on publishing their outcomes—some 100-plus papers over 10 years. However many others noticed industrial potential of their work.
“After we’d publish a paper, we’d go to a convention and make a presentation,” Samueli says. “Individuals would come as much as us after the discuss and say, ‘That is actually neat stuff. Have you ever ever thought of commercializing it and beginning an organization?’”
Samueli and Nicholas took the leap in August of 1991, incorporating Broadcom Corp. and chipping in US $5,000 every to lease an workplace and purchase computer systems and workplace provides.
Samueli stored working full-time at UCLA whereas Broadcom started bringing in small protection contracts: creating a digital frequency synthesizer for TRW, a digital filter for a Rockwell microwave radio, and, for the U.S. Air Drive, a digital filter to guard GPS alerts from jamming.
“These tasks funded our R&D, and we gained increasingly information,” says Samueli. [For more on Samueli’s early career, see this 1999 profile.]
Scientific Atlanta Connects with Broadcom
In December 1992, a scholar of Samueli’s
gave a presentation at Globecom (the IEEE International Telecommunications Convention, that’s) a few prototype 10-plus megabit-per-second digital modem chip the group had developed.
“What was totally different of their chip is that it built-in digital and analog,” remembers Leo Montreuil, then an engineer at
Scientific Atlanta and now an IC design engineer at Broadcom. On the time, Scientific Atlanta shared the U.S. cable TV set-top field market with just one competitor, General Instrument. “We had many firms making chips for Scientific Atlanta, however not that type of chip.”
After the presentation, Montreuil approached the scholar, who referred him to Samueli. Montreuil met with Samueli and Nicholas three months later.
Henry Samueli is donating the US $2 million from his IEEE Medal of Honor to assist an annual student-leadership convention. Peter Adams
Scientific Atlanta wasn’t simply casually curious in regards to the work. The corporate had signed a serious contract with Time Warner to construct 4,000 set-top bins for the world’s first digital cable system, referred to as the
Full Service Network. It wanted a digital modem for that field, however the crucial chips weren’t commercially out there.
“What they have been making an attempt to do in a single chip appeared so a lot better than multichip methods being developed by others,” says Montreuil. “If you go from analog to a digital implementation, it’s important to fear about drift, temperature sensitivity, and different points. The extra you’ll be able to implement within the digital area, the extra predictable is the system.”
Scientific Atlanta awarded a $1 million improvement contract to Broadcom in June of 1993. Though Broadcom’s design ended up utilizing three chips, the corporate did mix analog and digital circuitry on the identical silicon.
“The undertaking was simple,” Samueli says, “as a result of it was based mostly on the prototype designs we had already carried out. And it labored the primary time, flawlessly.”
Time Warner’s digital cable community—activated in Orlando, Fla., in early 1995—was a technical success, however Time Warner didn’t take it any additional. The community wasn’t supposed to be financially viable, Montreuil says, declaring that the core of every dwelling system was a prohibitively costly Solar SPARC workstation. “The purpose was to accumulate information and to get our foot within the door for the following technology.”
Broadcom’s modem design impressed each Scientific Atlanta and Normal Instrument. The 2 rivals invested $1 million every, for a ten p.c complete stake within the startup. That funding allowed Broadcom to maintain engaged on digital modems, to scale back the fee by placing all of the capabilities on a single chip.
Sherman Chen was a senior engineer at Normal Instrument on the time. “We knew then that the Broadcom gadget would dramatically prolong the boundaries of communications,” remembers Chen, who’s now vp of engineering in Broadcom’s broadband video group. “Concepts like superior error correction and digital compression have been round, however they have been all simply elegant theories till Broadcom constructed the primary mixed-signal silicon for broadband communications. Broadcom created an business.”
Broadcom wasn’t the one firm chasing the low-cost digital modem grail. One key competitor was LANcity, which had a $500 digital modem. The market was evolving rapidly, and it was changing into clear to cable operators that this new expertise would require standardization. Broadcom, CableLabs, Normal Instrument, LANcity, 3Com, and others
began collaborating in 1995 to create a global customary referred to as the Data-Over-Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS).
“Individuals would come as much as us after the discuss and say, ‘That is actually neat stuff. Have you ever ever thought of commercializing it and beginning an organization?’ ”— Henry Samueli
Round that point, Samueli left UCLA to deal with Broadcom, which had not too long ago moved from Los Angeles to Irvine, in Orange County. Reluctant to chop his educational ties, he requested that his departure be thought of a brief go away of absence. He formally stays on go away from UCLA even now.
In 1995, Broadcom launched its first mainstream industrial product—that’s, a tool constructed to promote on the open market, not developed beneath contract. The BCM3100 was an under-$20, single-chip, DOCSIS-compatible digital modem. In 1996, Broadcom added one other sort of product: digital Ethernet chips, what Samueli says was the world’s first all-digital implementation of Ethernet expertise. With these two profitable product strains, Broadcom went public in 1998 at a valuation of $1 billion, making Samueli, Nicholas, and lots of of Broadcom’s 320 or so staff rich. By mid-2000, that valuation had jumped to greater than $60 billion, with Samueli’s stake price about $10 billion, and, in line with the
Orange County Register, the common worker price almost $6 million.
“We have been a really beneficiant firm to our staff,” Samueli says. “We gave inventory to just about all people within the firm. We had it to present as a result of we didn’t dilute our shares by taking over venture capital buyers.”
The SEC Goes After Broadcom’s Inventory Possibility Grants
This sharing of the wealth, mockingly, led to one of many darkest chapters in Samueli’s story. Within the mid-2000s, the U.S. Securities and Alternate Fee started investigating using inventory choices at a variety of tech firms, together with Broadcom. The SEC opened a proper inquiry into Broadcom’s practices in late 2006 and in 2008 charged a number of Broadcom executives, together with Samueli and Nicholas, of backdating inventory choices.
“It was a nightmare,” Samueli says. “We went by means of 5 years of hell. It’s scary. They threaten you. They are saying, ‘We’re going to place you in jail for 300 years.’ ”
In late 2009, the case got here earlier than U.S. District Courtroom Choose
Cormac Carney. After listening to among the proof, together with testimony from Samueli and others, the decide “threw all the pieces out,” Samueli says.
Carney appeared notably outraged by the prosecution’s remedy of Samueli.
His ruling stated: “The uncontroverted proof at trial established that Dr. Samueli was an excellent engineer and a person of unbelievable integrity. There was no proof at trial to counsel that Dr. Samueli did something incorrect, not to mention legal. But, the federal government launched into a marketing campaign of intimidation and different misconduct to embarrass him and convey him down.”
Says Samueli: “This complete choices backdating scandal was distress, however I wouldn’t change what we did. I feel being overly beneficiant to staff is an effective factor.”
In the meantime, Broadcom cofounder Nicholas was struggling. He had resigned from the corporate in 2003, and across the identical time because the inventory choices investigation, he was indicted for distribution of unlawful medication. Nicholas entered rehab in 2008, and
the charges were eventually dropped. A decade later, although, Nicholas was arrested in Las Vegas for drug trafficking and took a plea deal with out admitting guilt.
“I haven’t spoken to him in a few years,” says Samueli. “It’s actually unhappy. However what he did for the corporate can’t be underestimated. I want him all the very best.”
Samueli’s Philanthropy and the Giving Pledge
Samueli remained a gradual presence as Broadcom’s chief expertise officer till 2018, persevering with by means of its acquisition by Avago in 2016. (The ensuing entity is now referred to as
Broadcom Inc.) Since 2018, he’s served as chairman. He nonetheless has an enormous affect on the corporate’s engineers. Charlie Kawwas, president of Broadcom’s semiconductor options group, says that Samueli continues to attend all the division’s technical evaluations—about 72 a yr, every lasting 2 to three hours.
“He engages with the engineers, asking questions and giving suggestions, they usually love that,” Kawwas says.
On a cruise to Antarctica in 2023, Henry Samueli “went to each lecture…he went on each tour,” a colleague remembers. Lindsey Spindle
Along with his present private wealth
estimated by Forbes at about $20 billion, Samueli spends a lot of his time giving money away by means of the Samueli Foundation. He additionally chairs the board of the Broadcom Foundation. He and his spouse, Susan, have dedicated to the Giving Pledge, promising to present away most of their wealth both throughout their lifetimes or of their wills.
“After Broadcom went public, and the inventory was flying, Susan and I made a decision we would have liked to begin giving this away. It was straightforward to think about what I needed to present again to. What created this wealth? My engineering education. And UCLA was that whole schooling—my bachelor’s, grasp’s, Ph.D., college member. So there was no query in my thoughts that the primary main reward could be to
UCLA and the engineering school, and that was $30 million in 1999.” [See “Henry Samueli’s Career Advice for Aspiring Engineers.”]
Since then, the Samueli Basis has supported engineering and integrative well being packages at UCLA and the College of California, Irvine, for a complete, Samueli estimates, of greater than $500 million. (Integrative well being is well being care that embraces different therapies together with standard medication and is a ardour of Samueli’s spouse.) The inspiration additionally targets tasks aimed toward bringing college students into the STEM pipeline, together with making a constitution center and highschool—
the Samueli Academy—centered on hands-on studying in engineering and design arts. It’s working with neighborhood faculties to develop coaching for nursing, building, maritime, and STEM careers. And the inspiration funds initiatives to fight antisemitism and to advertise collaborations with Israel and tasks inside Israel, a rising focus in response to current occasions.
“He engages with the engineers, asking questions and giving suggestions, they usually love that.”— Charlie Kawwas, Broadcom
Altogether the inspiration has distributed greater than $1 billion thus far, and it’s on monitor to present away a few billion extra on this decade, studies
Lindsey Spindle, president of the Samueli Household Philanthropies, which oversees the inspiration and the household’s different, smaller philanthropic efforts.
“Henry’s engineering background offers him the suitable structure for philanthropy,” Spindle says. “He is aware of about methods constructing. He appreciates interconnectivity. If you end up constructing {hardware}, it’s important to take into consideration the bigger system wherein it would operate, be affected person, and be keen to iterate. If you care about combating antisemitism, ending homelessness, and reorienting medication in the direction of well-being, you additionally must have a methods orientation and be keen to iterate.”
This yr’s IEEE Medal of Honor comes with a major money award—
$2 million, up from $50,000 within the current previous. Samueli, an IEEE since his scholar days and now an IEEE Fellow, plans to make use of the cash to create an endowment to allow IEEE’s Eta Kappa Nu honor society to host an annual student-leadership convention, one thing he’s been funding straight for the previous three years.
Henry Samueli and his spouse, Susan, rejoice the Stanley Cup victory for the Anaheim Geese hockey staff, which Samueli purchased in 2005. Harry How/Getty Pictures
Samueli can be the proprietor of the Nationwide Hockey League franchise the
Anaheim Ducks. At a look, this may appear to be a typical wealthy man’s plaything—and there’s no doubt that he enjoys his involvement with the staff. However the acquisition got here from an impulse to do good. In 2003, the corporate managing the Geese’ dwelling, the Anaheim Enviornment, went bankrupt. Anaheim officers knew Samueli was an energetic businessman within the Ocean County neighborhood, they usually requested him to take over administration of the sector (now referred to as the Honda Heart). In the meantime, Geese proprietor Disney was wanting to promote the staff.
Says Samueli: “In concern of an outsider coming in and transferring the staff out of city, we determined that, for the neighborhood’s sake, we’d be sure they keep right here—and discover ways to run a sports activities staff.”
“It was an enormous studying curve,” he says. “However in any enterprise, it’s actually in regards to the administration. We put in a great administration staff—and gained the Stanley Cup in our second yr of possession.”
His dive into studying about hockey is attribute of Samueli’s method to simply about all the pieces, individuals who’ve labored with him report.
“Henry has a seemingly limitless capability to entertain new concepts,” Spindle says. She described a visit to Antarctica, for which her household joined among the Samuelis. “Henry went to each lecture supplied on the ship. He went on each tour,” she says. In his work with the inspiration, she continued, he’s equally curious and engaged. “He exhibits up at each assembly,” she says. “You possibly can ship him a 120-page doc, and he’ll learn each phrase and are available ready to ask questions.”
The hockey staff is a part of Samueli’s funding in, and pleasure of, the Orange County neighborhood. Subsequent up is creating a real downtown Anaheim, within the type of an arts and leisure district tagged
OCVIBE. And in his free time, he takes lengthy e-bike rides simply to benefit from the neighborhoods.
“OCVIBE and the Geese are an essential a part of our lives,” Samueli says. “And as Broadcom inventory grows, we simply hold placing increasingly cash into the inspiration. That’s not going to cease. Then, in fact, there’s being on the Broadcom board and deeply concerned with Broadcom—I can see that persevering with for a few years. Theoretically, I’m retired, however I’m as busy as ever.”
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