But Dado Banatao passing away on 12/25/2025 hits differently in several layers. Charles Babbage was born on 12/26/1791.
Dado Banatao's death is losing an invisible tether. He is an inspiration to a lot of us who know him, especially Filipino immigrants in the Bay Area who are lucky to have seen more up close his genius, his humility, his kindness, but among all, his being a Filipino. I am neither a billionaire nor an engineer like him, but we both believe in the Filipino potential just waiting to be realized. His "I am a Filipino, so you better listen to me." is Miriam Defensor's "I represent the majesty of the Republic of the Philippines. Shut up or I'll knock your teeth off."
A farmer's son, finishing Electrical Engineering from Mapua, Dado worked as a trainee pilot with Philippine Airlines, but he ended up joining Boeing in the US. When he was at Boeing, he was a design engineer with what we would ultimately label 'Queen of the Skies' - the Boeing 747.
A restless mind, he stayed in America and pursued his Stanford master degree in computer science, and with his sheer brilliance and with a little bit of networking, not only did he invent the 10-Mbit Ethernet chip, but that it saw the light of commercial success. The world changed since 1981, it just did not know it yet.
What is a 10-Mbit Ethernet chip? Dado redeveloping the silicon chip changed how we use computers, giving birth to network computing, which forms the DNA of modern internet and cloud computing. The evolved microchips, along with undersea fiber optic cables allow for Blockchain to operate worldwide. Did he invent the silicon chip? No. Alan Turing did not invent the difference engine. But Dado made something so significant with microchips he now joins the altar where Blaise Pascal and Charles Babbage are also enshrined.
Before Dado Banatao's invention, consumer computers operate individually. Your boss had a computer in his desk. You had a computer on your desk. That's it. They didn’t talk. Sharing files was very slow and most likely done physically with hardware (floppy disks). You were high-tech if you had the Olympia Standard 200i typewriter, and you were considered god-like if you had ARPANET access. And even a higher middle class family in San Francisco would not need a computer, because cable tv, San Francisco Chronicle, Forbes Magazine, Conde Nast and NBC will do the work. Today, I microwave food using Google Assistant commands.
Dado democratized the computer when the chip was introduced to consumer level. Dado allowed computers to talk to each other with utmost reliability, creating computer networks for homes, schools, and offices. Continuous product development evolved but the design is now used in practically any smart device. Part of his design is a chip's capability to support software development without changing hardware. And chips just become more powerful as time goes by. From translating data in local networks to networks that operate on fiber optic cables under oceans, the whole ecosystem should be grateful to Dado.
An ethernet chip translates computer data into electrical or light signals which is communicated to other computers worldwide. Around 95-99% of internet traffic happens underwater, made possible because the microchips reliably and efficiently translate data into electric light signals - making a Facebook post written at Roaring Fork Valley readable and shareable in Dado's native Cagayan Valley in super lightning speed.
Like the magic of the internet, while it looks easy, it wasn't built in a day. Education is lifelong, but it starts early, with the intense leaning to defining fact, differentiating it with feelings. But with a culture so high-context, emotional, and teledrama-laden such as the Philippines, it is no wonder why we would rather believe the Martial Law-encouraged urban legend of Agapito Flores inventing fluorescent bulbs than Mar Roxas actually being a Wharton graduate even after Wharton said so. In the same note that Marcos supporters will believe Imee and Bongbong are bachelor degree holders, when both Princeton and Oxford denied respectively.
Dado shared what he thought were the truest foundations of any good education: critical thinking and academic rigor.
Dado's higher academic years are simultaneous with the Golden Age of Space, which pushed the boundaries of physics and computing. Around the time Dado was busy in Silicon Valley, a Filipina mathematician Angelina Castro-Kelly is busy working her way to be NASA's first woman Mission Operations Manager (MOM). Around this time, the Philippine government kept the people entertained by smokescreens provided by film fests, sports events, and beauty pageants.
The Bagong Lipunan era meant well, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. There was pressure to fake the literacy numbers just to showcase to the world that we are literate, even when we are idiots. And this forcing of data lessened the agency of academic rigor and made critical thinking a joke.
"Ang dami mong sinasabi/alam."
"Sus. Pwede na iyan."
These statements, while on the other side, are still on the same plane as the following:
"Ma'am, patungtungin naman po ninyo sa stage yung anak ko."
"Sir, baka naman po pwedeng ma-consider..."
"Maawa naman sana teacher ninyo. Pasko naman."
Academic rigor does not mean strictness, but loyalty to the spirit of teaching and pedagogy. In a sense, "pasang-awa" seems to be kindness, but really it is not, because it is mediocrity disguised as being nice. When we give stupids the pass or when fools are our only entertainment, it is only a matter of time that we would all be idiots, but we would not really even know it.
That is corruption. It is the same energy that allowed our democracy to be led by privileged and spoiled dropouts with little to no accountability, because we thought solving our systemic corruption in the Philippines is as easy and magical as electing someone who promised he would himself patrol crucial territories with a jetski.
Problem-solving was not a task for the mediocre. Dado's success was never shortcut. His father taught him well: reap your harvest after you plant the seeds. Dado studied for decades before he was able to let the earth experience consumer-level network computing through his genius redevelopment of microchips. He sought for the most efficient ways to do things. He was a true scholar gunning for scientific excellence. But with an education system as corrupt, putrid, and political like ours, Dado's ideas are bad for business.
Dado became a billionaire not because he was a good businessman. He was lucky to have the platform. He was just smart enough to have patents. I actually think he was not as good in business compared to other computer scientists like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. When Intel bought Dado's company, it showed that Dado was smart, but Intel was smarter. But that's what makes Dado a gem. Like a true scientist, an engineer, a good man, he is just happy to see that every working computer today has Dado's signature in all motherboards. And it works. And the true Filipino hero that he is, his foundation Philippine Development Foundation found its foothold in Pasig, a city known for pushing for digital governance.
As AI grows, there is increase in demand for semiconductors - which is made out of silica sand. And notably, the world's largest countries by land are among the largest producers of silicon (China, Brazil, Russia, US, and Canada) due to silicon being the second most common element on Earth, only next to oxygen. Thus, earth coverage equals silicon.
Among silicon's largest producer is Norway. But it is definitely not their size that made them productive. They are not that bigger than the Philippines. But, it is their zero tolerance for corruption that makes their systems work, their laws executed, their lives efficient, their silicon produced.
Today, publicly-traded microchip company Nvidia is the world's most valuable company, with the the Kingdom of Norway, through the Norwegian Central Bank owning 1.3% of the company. Nvidia founder Jensen Huang only owns about 3.3-3.8%. JPMorgan owns 1.9%. These are not trade secrets. These are public information made easily accessible online with indirect help of computer scientists the likes of Dado.
On the other hand, a November 2025 ASEAN study says 10% of the whole earth's total computer semiconductor assembly, testing, and packaging output happens in the Philippines, providing jobs to tons of Filipinos, and cementing the country's place in the global supply chain for technology hardware. We are dubbed as ASEAN's Emerging Semiconductor Giant and the "Father of the Philippine Semiconductor Industry" has just died.
The Philippines should not be poor, because we already offered the world a Dado, and Dado offered the world back to the motherland.
Sure, Dado's passing is very personal for close friends and family. But it is not every day we lose a true gift to our race. The way we can celebrate his life and legacy is to continue using a laptop, a tablet, a phone, or the internet to push forward our hopes to become a better nation of this world, for this world.
(And if that includes support for the ICC, so be it.)
Pakikiramay para kay Maria at sa mga naulila.
Salamat, Dado.
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