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From the XCF to Silicon Valley and back to Berkeley again
by Rachel Shafer
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EECS alumnus Augie Kuo, a computer whiz from childhood to his undergraduate years at the eXperimental Computing Facility, now designs chips for Broadcom. He and his wife Lisa Lejeune remain strongly attached to Berkeley.
PHOTO COURTESY AUGIE KUO
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In his undergraduate days, Augie Kuo (B.S.’89 EECS) burned the midnight oil working in the eXperimental Computing Facility (XCF). The student club is famous in techie circles for slaying viruses, championing open source, and creating the first Web browser. The club began as a programming outlet for the most daring, freewheeling and competitive EECS undergrads, where nothing less than brilliant code would do. Kuo was good enough to join the inner circle and, in those early years, he and other XCFers lost themselves in the passion and ambition of working on their own projects.
“Working in the XCF made you take responsibility for your own project,” Kuo says. “There was no one managing you. And those long hours in the computer lab prepared you for the long hours in the work environment. I remember walking around Cory Hall at 2 a.m., and there were still lots of people there.”
Kuo is a veteran of the Silicon Valley’s semiconductor companies and their late-night work style. That was particularly the case in August 1997, when he cofounded the chip design company Altima Communications. He put in long hours handling every aspect of the startup operation, where the initial five employees went out to Costco to buy desks and build their own offices.
“It was a busy time,” Kuo says, “but you had control of your own destiny.” When the company was purchased by Broadcom in 2000, he took a position in the broadband communications semiconductor company, where he is now a senior chip designer.
Computers always fascinated Kuo. As a child, he played video and computer games, which got him interested in how computers work. In high school he took advanced classes at Cal. As an EECS student, Kuo even set up and maintained his own web page, avant-garde in those days.
Today Kuo and his wife, Lisa Lejeune, rarely sit at their computers in their spare time. They’d rather travel, or you might see them sea kayaking, scuba diving or riding a tandem bike together. They maintain a strong connection to the campus and often return for concerts at Zellerbach Hall or football games at Memorial Stadium. They are also dedicated supporters and, in 2005, made a gift on behalf of Kuo’s late mother, who was a Cal employee.
“We still live here in Berkeley so we can hear the Campanile at night,” says Kuo.
Rachel Shafer is editor of Berkeley Engineering's student weekly, Engineering News.
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