Congratulations Dave and John!
Dave Patterson and John Hennessey won the ACM's Turing Award this year for their outstanding research contributions to RISC computers and a methodology for quantitative computer architecture. A video of their acceptance lecture is online.
This is a well-deserved award to two great researchers and teachers who have had a profound influence on industry and generations of students. I've known Dave since I arrived at UC Berkeley in 1981, and I want to thank Dave for his profound influence on my career.
In fact, if it wasn't for him, I would be doing something else, in some other field. When I arrived at UCB in 1981, I loved computing but wasn't too excited about computer science. The undergraduate computer science program at Harvard (which was then hidden in the Applied Math department) was theoretical and rather dry. When I was accepted to graduate school at UCB, I wasn't sure I wanted a PhD, but I was sure I wanted to live in California, so I accepted their offer with the intention of getting a Masters and finding something else to do (law school was an alternative, thankfully a route I did not pursue). Soon after arriving in Berkeley, I went to a talk by Dave Patterson about his new research on RISC Computers and was truly excited by CS for the first time in years. This slide:
This is a well-deserved award to two great researchers and teachers who have had a profound influence on industry and generations of students. I've known Dave since I arrived at UC Berkeley in 1981, and I want to thank Dave for his profound influence on my career.
In fact, if it wasn't for him, I would be doing something else, in some other field. When I arrived at UCB in 1981, I loved computing but wasn't too excited about computer science. The undergraduate computer science program at Harvard (which was then hidden in the Applied Math department) was theoretical and rather dry. When I was accepted to graduate school at UCB, I wasn't sure I wanted a PhD, but I was sure I wanted to live in California, so I accepted their offer with the intention of getting a Masters and finding something else to do (law school was an alternative, thankfully a route I did not pursue). Soon after arriving in Berkeley, I went to a talk by Dave Patterson about his new research on RISC Computers and was truly excited by CS for the first time in years. This slide:
(Image courtesy of Dave Patterson)
said that CS could be fun as well as serious, and I thought "that is what I want to do". I haven't had a second thought about this decision, so thanks a lot Dave!
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