Two Chip Experts Receive Turing Award: Will Split Google Million Dollar Bonus

Two engineers who developed RISC microprocessors and made this concept popular have won the 2017 ACM Turing Award. Prof. John Hennessy and David Patterson became winners of the Turing Award this year.

They will split the $1 million bonus provided by Google. Hennessy is the executive chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and Patterson is a member of the Google Brain team.

In  1981, under the leadership of Patterson, a team at the University of  California, Berkeley drafted RISC-1, which is the basis of today's RISC  architecture. RISC-1 was subsequently selected by Sun Microsystems to make the Sparc processor.

Almost  at the same time, Hennessy, who teaches at Stanford University, is also  exploring RISC architecture and co-founded MIPS Computer Systems,  turning its vision into a true device. MIPS manufactures chips for high-end computer workstations, game consoles, aircraft, and network equipment.

In  1990, Patterson and Hennessy co-authored the book "Computer  Architecture: A Quantitative Approach," which spreads RISC concepts to  the academic and industrial worlds. Until now, this book is still a must  for programmers, computer engineers, and processor designers. Read a book. Their research has had a tremendous impact on the development of many  chips, from Arm to Alpha to PowerPC, these chips are widely used in  today's smart phones, Internet of things, tablet computers, servers and  other devices.

After Hennessy became president of Stanford University, later joined the Alphabet. Patterson also became a Google person and vice chairman of the RISC-V Foundation. RISC-V is an open, free RISC CUP framework that is used by companies such as Western Digital, Nvidia, and Google.