Dado Banatao, tech trailblazer; 79
Diosdado “Dado” Banatao, an electrical engineer acclaimed in his field and a Silicon Valley pioneer who became one of the most influential Filipinos in global technology, died on Christmas Day in the United States. He was 79.
His family said Banatao died peacefully after complications from an undisclosed neurological disorder. He was surrounded by relatives and friends at the campus of Stanford University, his alma mater.
“We are mourning his loss, but take comfort from the time spent with him during this Christmas season, and that his fight with this disease is over,” the family said in a statement.
Beginnings, education
Colleagues regarded Banatao as the “Bill Gates of the Philippines,” but he made a name for himself in his own right. The Filipino tech entrepreneur innovated several chip designs that revolutionized the PC industry in the late 1980s to the 1990s.
In the Philippines he was referred to as the “father of semiconductors.”
Growing up in the farming town of Iguig, Cagayan province, where he walked barefoot to class, Banatao finished high school with honors at the Ateneo de Tuguegarao.
At the Mapua Institute of Technology, he earned a degree in electrical engineering. After graduating, Banatao was offered a job at Meralco but he declined. Instead he became a pilot trainee at Philippine Airlines. Later he was asked to join Boeing, where he was able to pursue further his interest in design engineering.
He then traveled to the United States, completing a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford.
Banatao went on to develop such landmark semiconductor technologies as the system logic chipsets for the PC-XT and PC/AT (IBM’s initial personal computers first introduced in the early 1980s) and a local version of the pioneering “bus architecture” diagram which helped speed up computer performance in the 1970s onward. At Ethernet, he found a way to put the controller in a single chip, instead of the traditional big boards.
Startups
He was one of the few Filipinos to rise through the upper ranks of Silicon Valley. In 1984, he and a business partner founded Mostron, a company that further developed chipsets and motherboards and that led to the establishment of another company, Chips and Technologies, which Intel later acquired in 1997 for $420 million.
He established another startup in 1989 called S3 Graphics, which pioneered the local bus concept and developed Windows accelerator chips.
Banatao moved into venture capital in 2000, founding Tallwood Venture which focused on investing in semiconductor technology.
‘Strategic vision’
In his later years, he devoted his efforts to education, particularly science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). In Iguig, he built a computer center for his elementary school there. He sought to provide the youth, beginning in his home province, the same opportunities that allowed him to pursue his career.
In 2011, he founded the Philippine Development Foundation (PhilDev), a nonprofit operating in the United States and the Philippines as it provided scholarships, mentorship and training programs to young Filipinos pursuing careers in the STEM fields.
“We created PhilDev in 2010 when we embarked on a strategic vision for helping the country in terms of science and technology-based innovation and entrepreneurship to promote economic growth,” Banatao said in an interview with the Inquirer in 2015. “I was there from the beginning because it was formed by a lot of my research.”
Former Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima said of Banatao: “He believed deeply in Filipino talent and often emphasized that talent was never the problem.”
“What mattered [to him] was opportunity and access to world-class technology education,” Purisima said.
Awards, distinctions
In 2017, the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) paid tribute to Banatao when it launched the AIM-Dado Banatao Incubator, a program that has since helped launch more than 70 startups in the Philippines.
In the United States, another learning center bears his name: the Banatao Institute at the University of California’s Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society.
Banatao received numerous honors for his contributions to technology and entrepreneurship.
He was awarded the Master Entrepreneur of the Year Award by both Ernst & Young Inc. and Merrill Lynch Business Financial Services, as well as the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, which recognizes contributions by US citizens to an ethnic group or country.
He was listed several times on the Forbes Midas List which tracks the world’s top technology investors.
In the Philippines, then President Fidel Ramos conferred on Banatao the Pamana ng Pilipino Presidential Award in 1992. He later received the Order of the Golden Heart, rank of the Grand Cross, from President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and served as the country’s first special envoy of science and technology.
Banatao’s family will soon announce details of the wake. It encouraged those wishing to honor his memory to consider donating to PhilDev. —WITH INQUIRER RESEARCH
