#5 Ajay Bhatt
Invention: USB
Ajay V. Bhatt is an Indian-American computer architect who helped define and develop several widely used technologies, including USB (Universal Serial Bus), AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port), PCI Express, Platform Power management architecture and various chipset improvements.
Ajay Bhatt rose to global celebrity as the co-inventor of USB through an Intel 2009 TV advertisement, where he was portrayed by actor Sunil Narkar.
A few days back, The European Union honored him for leading a team at the US tech-giant Intel that developed the Universal Serial Bus (USB) technology, one of the most important advances in computing since the silicon chip.
The European Patent Office announced the winners of the European Inventor Award 2013, which honors outstanding inventors for their contribution to social, economic and technological progress. An industry standard today, USB not only allows users to more easily connect devices to a computer, it also streamlines work for hardware and software developers. It is found in billions of electronic devices all over the world, from webcams to cell phones and memory sticks
After completing his graduation in Vadodara, India, Bhatt completed his master's degree in New York. Bhatt joined Intel in 1990. He currently holds 31 US patents.
#4 Shiva Ayyadurai
Invention: Email
VA Shiva Ayyadurai was born 2 December 1963 in Mumbai, India. At age seven, he left with his family to live in the United States. At the age of 14, he attended a special summer program at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University (NYU) to study computer programming, and it was the period, as he claims, led to invention of email.
It is quite heartening to mention that, Ayyadurai missed on the fame for some reason, even though he was just a 14 year old teenager when he invented email in 1978. He developed a full-scale emulation of the interoffice mail system, which he called "EMAIL" and copyrighted in 1982. That name's resemblance to the generic term "email" and the claims he later made for the program have led to controversy over Ayyadurai's place in the history of computer technology.
In languages such as FORTRAN IV, it was conventional and a well-known fact that names of programs, variables and subroutines were typically written in upper case --- thus the convention of "EMAIL" to refer to the main subroutine name of the program V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai developed. By the source code submitted to the US Copyright Office and by the documents provided to the Smithsonian, email's intention and origin was to replicate electronically the interoffice, inter-organizational mail system. These are indisputable facts, as I have referred to in my earlier statement. Note by the Copyright Act of 1976, once a work is in publication it is protected. In 1978, "email" was first coined and used by Shiva to name his program.
#3 Vinod Dham
Invention: Intel Pentium Chip
We are all well aware about the fact that Intel processors brought quite a revolution to computing world. The chips that made computers fast and efficient. And the inventor of the chip is an Indian, Vinod Dham. He is popularly known as the Father of the Pentium chip, for his contribution to the development of highly successful Pentium Processors from Intel. He is a mentor, advisor and investor; and sits on the boards of many companies including promising startups funded through his India based fund – Indo US Venture Partners, where he is the founding Managing Director.
After graduation in Electrical Engineering (with an emphasis in Electronics) from the prestigious Delhi College of Engineering (now known as Delhi Technological University) in 1971, he joined a Delhi-based semiconductor company called Continental Devices. In 1975, he left this job and joined University of Cincinnati, in Cincinnati, Ohio – USA, to pursue a master's degree in Electrical Engineering, where he specialized in Solid State Science. After completing his masters degree in 1977, he joined NCR Corporation at Dayton, Ohio, where he did cutting edge work in developing advanced Non-Volatile Memories. He then joined Intel, where he led the development of the world famous Pentium processor.