Andy Bechtolsheim

Andy Bechtolsheim
Andy Bechtolsheim
Born	(1955-09-30) September 30, 1955 (age 61) Bavaria, Germany
Known for	Co-founder Sun Microsystems Google investor
Net worth	US$ 3.8 billion (January 2015)

Andreas "Andy" von Bechtolsheim (born September 30, 1955, full name Andreas Maria Maximilian Freiherr von Mauchenheim genannt Bechtolsheim) is an electrical engineer who co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and was its chief hardware designer. He later became an investor, providing the first major funding for Google, and starting several computer networking companies.

Bechtolsheim was born near Ammersee, in the German state of Bavaria. He grew up on a farm with the Alps in the distance, the second of four children. Since the isolated house had no television and distant neighbors, he experimented with electronics as a child. In 1963 the family moved to Rome, and then in 1968 to Nonnenhorn on Lake Constance in Germany. When he was only 16, he designed an industrial controller based on the Intel 8008 for a nearby company. Royalties from the product supported much of his education.

As an engineering student at University of Technology Munich Bechtolsheim entered the Jugend forscht contest for young researchers, and after entering for three years, won the physics prize in 1974. Bechtolsheim received a Fulbright Award and moved to the US in 1975 to attend Carnegie Mellon University, where he received his master's degree in computer engineering in 1976. In 1977 Bechtolsheim moved to Silicon Valley to work for Intel, but quit when they transferred him to Oregon the first week. He took a summer job at Stanford University and became a Ph.D. student in electrical engineering.

At Stanford, Bechtolsheim designed a powerful computer (called a workstation) with built-in networking called the SUN workstation, a name derived from the initials for the Stanford University Network. It was inspired by the Xerox Alto computer developed at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. Bechtolsheim was a "no fee consultant" at Xerox, meaning he was not paid but had free access to the research being done there. In particular, Lynn Conway was using workstations to design very-large-scale integration (VLSI) circuits.