Artifact Details

Title

Shirley, Brian oral history

Catalog Number

102792862

Type

Document

Description

In this oral history Brian Shirley shares his own story spending 32 years at Micron Technology, but equally important he shares the inside story of how Micron survived and ultimately thrived as the only US-based DRAM manufacturer. Based in Boise Idaho and originally financed by J. R. Simplot who made his fortune in potatoes, Micron succeeded where much larger and more established companies failed. Companies like Intel, Texas Instruments, Hitachi, NEC and so many more decided to leave the brutally competitive memory business and pursue other paths. Micron, partially because it had no other options, stayed the course. With a fanatical focus on cost/bit, careful optimization of their unique process technology, great management and dedication to the business snatched victory from the jaws of defeat many times and survived where so many others failed.

Brian Shirley played a key role in Micron’s success. He joined the company early on in 1988 after graduation from Stanford with a BSEE. He could have gone on to get a Master’s degree, but after working summers at Micron, he was eager to get started on his career and didn’t feel further education would benefit him.

He began out as a product engineer, sitting between design and production. He found that position to be both interesting and a valuable education into what the key factors were in Micron’s success. One of those keys was to keep the designers, product engineers, and production working physically close to each other and cooperating closely to identify and solve problems quickly. He later moved to design and in 2006 became VP of Engineering for Micron. He served in this role until 2019 when he retired. As just one measure of his contribution to Micron’s success, Brian held 82 patents when he retired.

Date

2023-05-24

Contributor

Fairbairn, Douglas, Interviewer

Shirley, Brian, Interviewee

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Mountain View, CA

Extent

22 p.

Format

PDF

Subject

Micron Technology; Parkinson, Joe; Parkinson, Ward; DRAM; Simplot, J. R.; Qimonda; NAND; Numonyx; Appleton, Steve

Collection Title

CHM Oral History Collection

Credit