Sharky Extreme talks to Chief Technology Officer Gary Tarolli, the man who put that 'T' in SST and the GL in GLide. In 1994, together with resident genius Scott Sellers and business maven (now Quantum3D founder) Ross Smith, he created a little company called 3Dfx Interactive…
As 3Dfx is poised to make some big announcement at COMDEX (and just in case the industry pundits rewrite history and decide that 3Dfx was actually created by Uncle Bill to insure some real competition for the DirectX squad as a hedge against those Senate investigations), it seems the proper moment to play 20 questions FOR THE RECORD. The good bits have been edited out to curb fisticuffs in local San Jose restaurants.
Name, rank & serial port please. A bit of background on your 3D credentials, how you all hooked up, favourite tequila, etc...
Gary Tarolli, CTO (Chief Technology Officer), employee #1
9 years at SGI,
1 year consulting,
1 year at Pellucid/MediaVision.
Met up with Scott and Ross at Pellucid. Pellucid was bought by MediaVision, which went bankrupt - a lucky event for us or we would have never left and started 3Dfx when we did.
Favorite tequila is free tequila.
Tell us about the early days then. It was three men in Ross Smith's living room, right?
Both Ross' and Scott's living rooms were used. I used to fly out to California and stay with Scott, and vica versa (he flew out to Boston to stay with me). Once he was in Boston for a week and on Thursday I realized we hadn't gone outside my home for 4 days, so I said, "Scott we are going outside to toss the football around with my kids." (Scott was a quarterback in college). So we did - it's amazing how much zip a real quarterback can put into a pass!
