Chief Engineer, Hp
Search every verified Chandrakant Patel interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. In a 2017 interview, HP Chief Engineer and Senior Fellow Chandrakant Patel argued that engineering fundamentals remain essential in the data-centric age. He stated that while data centers were built on fundamentals, there is a tendency to treat mechanical systems as a black box and rely solely on data scientists. Patel described a case where disk drive failures were attributed to guesswork about temperature, but he identified a resonance issue by calculating the fundamental frequency of the drive arm and the fan rotational speed. He said that for complex problems like 3D printing, depth in multiple fields—such as a master's in mechanical engineering and a PhD in computer science—is necessary. Patel has over 150 patents and papers and is a member of the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame. He has written that machine learning requires domain knowledge, and he has advised engineers to stick to their fundamentals, noting that the 21st century is cyber-physical and necessitates that depth.
“There may still be a place for engineering fundamentals — the basics, the physics behind what we do — it is still an essential part of this process.”
“We need to design energy-efficient data centers, so that's where fundamentals come in — fundamentals will be central to our success going into the future.”
“The Information Age was built on data centers and those data centers were built on fundamentals; we've fallen into thinking 'all the data is available so I don't need to know the second law of thermodynamics' — that's unfortunate because the 21st century is cyber‑physical and necessitates depth in fundamentals.”
“I hear people say 'we can simulate everything' and hire data scientists so the mechanical system is a black box and they'll figure it out — but the black box is not that simple; you must have domain knowledge.”
“We collected data on disk drive failures and people guessed factors like temperature, but I calculated the fundamental frequency of the arm and deduced that the fan rotational speed was causing the arm to vibrate — a resonance issue affecting throughput.”
“That's a classic resonance issue — just like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.”
“When I worked at Memorex there was a commercial showing Ella Fitzgerald's voice shattering glass — people immediately understood resonance; it's an age of fundamentals.”
“For complex problems such as 3D printing — with thousands of nozzles and heat-transfer phenomena — you need depth in almost two fields; for example, a master's in mechanical engineering and a PhD in computer science.”
HP Chief Engineer and Senior Fellow Chandrakant Patel on the importance of knowing your fundamentals in today's cyber-physical world. Link to Chandrakant's article: https://goo.gl/YexvFM visit www.ENGINEERING.com for more.
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