Recent "Sound Chip, whisper me your secrets!" talk from Gulaschprogrammiernacht hacker convention https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44432451 is about reverse engineering from silicon nineties audio DSPs (Ensoniq, Roland, Yamaha) and those chips are truly bizarre. 48-bit VLIW with no jumps/conditionals.
Sounds like an amazing guy. Bell labs had such engineering talent. I’m somewhat against breaking up Google (Alphabet) because it might be the the only company left with vaguely similar culture, capability and capital.
>Bell labs had such engineering talent
True. 56K modem inventor Brent Townshend went to work at Bell Labs (87-90) straight from Uni and undoubtedly access to state of the art DSP technology so early was a key factor.