CS CONNECTION
TECHIGNITE EVENT
FEATURING APPLE’S STEVE
WOZNIAK SET FOR MARCH 2017
TechIgnite, an IEEE Computer Society
Rock Stars of Technology event, is an
exclusive two-day gathering in which
attendees will connect with wellknown industry experts to hear firsthand insights, use cases, and strategies
used in four key areas: cybersecurity,
the Internet of Things, big data, and
emerging technologies. Scheduled for
21–22 March 2017 in San Francisco, the
event’s keynote speakers include Steve
Wozniak, cofounder of Apple, and
Grady Booch, chief scientist for software engineering at IBM Research.
Attendees will have full access to
lively panel discussions addressing
top technologies and challenges facing the industry, along with more than
40 exhibits on site and exclusive networking opportunities. The first 300
people to register for TechIgnite can
participate in a book signing and meetand-greet session with Steve Wozniak.
General registration for TechIgnite
2017 is now open, providing attendees with an early-bird discount off the
standard registration fee. To register,
visit www.computer.org/techignite.
GRADY BOOCH RECEIVES 2016
IEEE COMPUTER SOCIETY’S
COMPUTER PIONEER AWARD
Grady Booch, chief scientist for software engineering at IBM Research, has
received the IEEE Computer Society’s
2016 Computer Pioneer Award for significant contributions to early concepts
and developments in the electronic computer field that have clearly advanced
the state of the art in computing.
Booch is best known for his work
in advancing the fields of software
engineering and software architecture, and for originating the term and
practice of object-oriented design. A
102
coauthor of the Unified Modeling Language (UML), and a founding member
of both the Agile Alliance and the Hillside Group, Booch has published six
books and several hundred technical
articles, including an ongoing column
for IEEE Software.
An IEEE Fellow, Booch served as
chief scientist of Rational Software
Corporation since its founding in 1981
and through its acquisition by IBM in
2013. He has been deeply involved in
IBM’s cognitive systems strategy for
Watson and other systems, further
advancing the science and practice of
cognitive systems.
The Computer Pioneer Award was
established in 1981 by the IEEE Computer Society Board of Governors to
recognize and honor the vision of those
whose efforts resulted in the creation
and continued vitality of the computing industry. The award is presented to
outstanding individuals whose main
contribution to the concepts and development of the computer field was made
at least 15 years earlier. For more information, visit www.computer.org/web
/awards/pioneer.
IEEE COMPUTER SOCIETY AND
ACM HONOR URI WEISER WITH
2016 ECKERT–MAUCHLY AWARD
IEEE Computer Society and ACM will
jointly present the Eckert–Mauchly
Award to Uri Weiser, who has worked
in government, academia, and
industry for nearly 40 years, for his
leadership and pioneering work in
high-­
performance processors and
multimedia architectures. Weiser has
made seminal contributions to the
computing industry, including defining the first Intel Pentium Processor
architecture and being a recognized
leader in asymmetric and heterogeneous manycore architecture.
In the late 1980s, Weiser was an
CO M PUTE R P U B LISH ED BY TH E I EEE COMP UTER SOCI E T Y
engineer with Intel’s Design Architecture Group and single-handedly convinced Intel executives to continue
using CISC-based x86 processors by
showing that through adding new
features such as superscalar execution, branch predication, and more,
the x86 processors could perform
competitively against the RISC family
of processors. Weiser’s architectural
enhancements laid the foundation for
the Intel Pentium Processor.
Weiser and his student Alex Peleg
invented the trace cache, which
increases performance and reduces
power consumption by storing traces
of instructions that have already been
fetched and decoded. This innovation
made a fundamental change to the
design principles of high-­performance
microprocessors. A trace cache was
incorporated into each of the over 500
million Intel Pentium 4 processors
Intel has sold.
Shortly after enhancing Intel’s
line of CISC-based processors, Weiser
co-invented and led the MMX—a set
of 64-bit single-instruction, multiple-­
data (SIMD) instructions that increase the performance of digital
signal processing, graphics processing, speech recognition, and video
encoding/decoding.
In the early 2000s, Weiser began
investigating improved power and
performance architectures to speed
­
up media applications. This research
led Weiser to become a pioneer in
the areas of heterogeneous computing (systems that use more than one
kind of processor or core) and asymmetric computing (systems in which
separate and unique code can run on
both the parallel and general-purpose
cores simultaneously).
Weiser is currently professor emeritus in the Electrical Engineering
department of the Technion–Israel
0018-9162/16/$33.00 © 2016 IEEE
IN MEMORY OF EDWARD J. MCCLUSKEY (1929–2016)
E
dward (Ed) J. McCluskey, Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University and the IEEE Computer Society’s first president, passed away
on 13 February, 2016 at age 86. A pioneer of computer engineering, McCluskey helped shape
the design and testing of digital systems and was one of the world’s leading educators.
After graduating from Bowdoin College in Maine in 1953, earning honors in mathematics and physics, McCluskey earned his PhD in electrical engineering at MIT. During his time
as a doctoral student, he created the Quine–McCluskey logic minimization procedure, the
first algorithm for designing combinational circuits. As a staff engineer at Bell Telephone
Laboratories during its heyday, McCluskey worked on electronic switching systems with
researchers who were inventing many of the building blocks of electronics and computing. He left Bell Labs in 1959 to become an associate professor of electrical engineering
at Princeton University, where he established the computer engineering curriculum and
founded the University Computer Center. During this time, he developed the modern
© Joel Simon
theory of transients (hazards) in logic networks and formulated the concept of operation
modes of sequential circuits.
In 1966, McCluskey joined the faculty at Stanford, where he later founded the Digital Systems Laboratory (now the Computer
Systems Laboratory) and the Computer Engineering Program (now the Computer Science MS Degree Program). He also founded
the university’s Center for Reliable Computing, which played a major role in advancing the fields of computer reliability and testing.
His research at Stanford focused on logic testing, synthesis, design for testability, and fault-tolerant computing.
In 1970, McCluskey became the first president of the IEEE Computer Society, and he was instrumental in transforming what
was the “IEEE Computer Group” to a full-fledged IEEE society. “The changes which we hope to implement,” he wrote in a special
message from the chairman published in the September/October 1970 issue of Computer, “are aimed at increasing our ability to
serve a different type of member … that newer type of professional who regards himself as a computer engineer or scientist rather
than an electrical engineer.”
McCluskey received numerous awards and honors throughout his career, including the IEEE John von Neumann Medal in 2012,
one of the top honors in computing, and the 1996 IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award for “pioneering and fundamental contributions to
design automation and fault-tolerant computing.” He was a Fellow of IEEE, ACM, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). He published several books, including two
widely used texts, and mentored more than 75 doctoral students over the years.
“Professor McCluskey was the father of modern digital design,” said Arvind Krishna, senior vice president and director of IBM
Research. “His seminal contributions to switching theory, logic design, testing, and fault-tolerant computing laid the foundation
for the computer processors that power so much of our world today.”
McCluskey is survived by his wife Lois, five of his six children, eleven grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. The family asks
that anyone wishing to remember McCluskey with a donation make a gift in his name to the Sempervirens Fund, Peninsula Open
Space Trust, or Save the Redwoods League.
Sources: Mitra Subhasish and Tom Abate (Stanford University)
Institute of Technology (IIT). He holds
13 patents and has authored more than
50 publications. He was recognized
with the Intel Achievement Award on
two occasions, and is a Fellow of Intel,
IEEE, and ACM. Weiser is active on the
advisory boards of numerous startups.
The Eckert–Mauchly Award is
known as the computer architecture
community’s most prestigious award.
Weiser will receive the award at the
ACM/IEEE International Symposium
on Computer Architecture (ISCA) to be
held 18–22 June in Seoul, Korea.
IEEE Computer Society and ACM
cosponsor the Eckert–Mauchly Award,
which was initiated in 1979. It recognizes contributions to computer
and digital systems architecture and
comes with a $5,000 prize. The award
was named for John Presper Eckert and John William Mauchly, who
collaborated on the design and construction of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC),
the pioneering large-scale electronic
computing machine, which was completed in 1947. For more information,
visit www.computer.org/web/awards
/eckert-mauchly.
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