Up Front
SongPro CTO Marc Hannah: Silicon Valley's Master Designer
By Jill Yesko
Apr 15, 2003, 05:21

Special effects wiz, groundbreaking computer scientist, and designer Marc R. Hannah, Ph.D., 46, is old enough to remember Pong: the crude, 1972 Atari video game that was the prehistoric ancestor of the cybertainment industry. Hannah, who holds 13 patents and who helped design the early architecture for the Nintendo 64 game system, recalls spending free time playing Space Invaders and Centipede during his undergraduate years at Illinois Institute of Technology.

These days, downtime for Hannah means squeezing in flying lessons (He says flight simulators sparked his interest in computer graphics.) in between his new responsibilities as chief technology officer of SongPro, Inc.

A self-described perfectionist, Hannah acknowledges that in the constantly changing cybertainment environment, getting fixated on a single solution, process, or design can be deadly, especially for startup companies like SongPro, which was founded in 2000.

"Technology is constantly evolving," Hannah says. "It's important to do the best you can within a certain set of constraints and make your improvement as you go on."

Developing systems for delivering secure music and video streaming to millions of pocket game users and handheld electronic devices the world over is a heady challenge as well as a departure, admits Hannah. Hannah cofounded Silicon Graphics Incorporated (SGI), where he also served as principal scientist. The company went public in 1986 and is listed on the NASDAQ.

SGI designed the computers and 3-D graphics technology used to create spectacular special effects in such Hollywood blockbusters as "Jurassic Park," "Beauty and the Beast," and "Field of Dreams." Hannah pioneered the design of the high-performance workstations that are now the industry standard for computer-generated imagery. SGI technology has been used by biomedical firms to analyze gene sequencing and by the military in visual simulators.

Hannah, who won the Black Engineer of the Year Award for Technical Contribution in 1988, says he was semiretired when SongPro approached him about bringing his numerous talents on board. His decision to join SongPro had to do as much with friendship with SongPro founder and chairman Ronald L. Jones as with SongPro's product and direction.

"I wanted to help him to succeed," says Hannah. "I saw him pushing the dream."