Quiet EE cooks up Sun's blockbuster CPU

摘要

On his rumpled gray polo shirt, worn blue chinos and two-day-old beard, Les Kohn doesn't send any signals to a first-time visitor of someone shaking up a multibil-lion-dollar business. Averting his glance, this veteran of as many as six microprocessor design projects seems like someone who could disappear into the beige office walls around him were it not for being asked a direct question. Almost startled, Kohn's gray-green eyes flutter and land on you. His clear, gentle voice intones a few thoughtful sentences, and you begin to get a sense of the insightful and unassuming engineer behind Sun Microsystems Inc.'s hottest microprocessor in years.