Congratulations to John Hennessy
Mar. 28th, 2018 01:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
patoadamI am thrilled to hear that John Hennessy, my mentor when I was a student, has won the annual Turing award, the most prestigious award in Computer Science.
Hennessy was my advisor when I was a Master's student, and he supervised my Master's project. Hennessy's dedication to his work inspired me to do more.
Hennessy was, at various times:
* A pioneer in RISC (reduced instruction set computer) architecture. Your cell phone has a RISC CPU in it.
* A co-founder of MIPS Computer Systems
* A co-author, with David Patterson, of the book "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach", which brought quantitative rigor to the black art of designing computer architectures. Even though I never did computer architecture, insights from that book helped me in my career.
* President of Stanford University
* Chairman of Alphabet, the parent company of Google
Hennessy shares the award with David Patterson, who is equally deserving. I have said little about Patterson simply because I don't know him.
Hennessy was my advisor when I was a Master's student, and he supervised my Master's project. Hennessy's dedication to his work inspired me to do more.
Hennessy was, at various times:
* A pioneer in RISC (reduced instruction set computer) architecture. Your cell phone has a RISC CPU in it.
* A co-founder of MIPS Computer Systems
* A co-author, with David Patterson, of the book "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach", which brought quantitative rigor to the black art of designing computer architectures. Even though I never did computer architecture, insights from that book helped me in my career.
* President of Stanford University
* Chairman of Alphabet, the parent company of Google
Hennessy shares the award with David Patterson, who is equally deserving. I have said little about Patterson simply because I don't know him.
