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 Hennessy and Patterson receive the Turing award 
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Joined: Sat Oct 28, 2017 12:16 am
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https://www.acm.org/media-center/2018/m ... award-2017

It looks like we aren't the only ones appreciating computer architecture ;-) I must admit I never read their books - but I clearly remember being very impressed by the elegance of the MIPS design when I first encountered it.


Fri Mar 23, 2018 9:35 pm
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Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2013 6:54 pm
Posts: 1780
It'll be good to see their acceptance transcripts when they come out...

I've got one of their books but haven't read it properly.


Sat Mar 24, 2018 8:27 pm
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Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2013 6:54 pm
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Seems like the award ceremony is in June, so we'll be waiting a few months for the acceptance.

Meantime, here they appear in a podcast interview:
https://www.recode.net/2018/4/25/172772 ... er-podcast

And for extra architectural interest, here's Patterson on the evolution of architectures, (briefly) taking in IBM 360, VAX, i432, 8086 and so on, in a lecture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9KRq2Ns0ZE
Quote:
We start by looking back at 50 years of computer architecture, where philosophical debates on instruction sets (RISC vs. CISC, VLIW vs. RISC) and parallel architectures (NUMA vs clusters) were settled with billion dollar investments on both sides. In the second half, we look forward. First, Moore's Law is ending, so the free ride is over software-oblivious increasing performance. Since we've already played the multicore card, the most-likely/only path left is domain-specific processors. The memory system is radically changing too. First, Jim Gray's decade-old prediction is finally true: "Tape is dead; flash is disk; disk is tape." New ways to connect to DRAM and new non-volatile memory technologies promise to make the memory hierarchy even deeper. Finally, and surprisingly, there is now widespread agreement on instruction set architecture, namely Reduced Instruction Set Computers. However, unlike most other fields, despite this harmony has been no open alternative to proprietary offerings from ARM and Intel. RISC-V ("RISC Five") is the proposed free and open champion. It has a small base of classic RISC instructions that run a full open-source software stack; opcodes reserved for tailoring an System-On-a-Chip (SOC) to applications; standard instruction extensions optionally included in an SoC; and it is unrestricted: there is no cost, no paperwork, and anyone can use it. The ability to prototype using ever-more-powerful FPGAs and astonishingly inexpensive custom chips combined with collaboration on open-source software and hardware offers hope of a new golden era for hardware/software systems.


For a more popular format, here's The Computer Chronicles from 1986 on RISC:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIccm7H3OA0


Sat Apr 28, 2018 11:10 am
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Joined: Tue Dec 11, 2012 8:03 am
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Location: California
I always enjoy those Computer Chronicles shows. I remember the excitement in the field back then, 1986. I also remember an article in one of the industry magazines telling that the RISC enthusiasts got a wet blanket thrown on them when the 68040 came out, a CISC that outperformed all the RISCs. Since then of course the lines have been blurred.

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Sat Apr 28, 2018 7:56 pm
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I've always avoided Computer Chronicles for some reason, seemed not quite my thing, but in the past couple of days I have binged on quite a few of them. Of course it was never seen over here (in the UK) back in the day, so for me it's retro but not nostalgic.


Sat Apr 28, 2018 7:58 pm
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I "discovered" that show only recently, maybe in the last year or two. I don't like how the host always had to cut people off, but the time was always limited, and the guests tended to talk without end unless cut off. There was a lot of interesting stuff though.

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Sat Apr 28, 2018 8:04 pm
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This interview with Stewart Cheifet should be interesting:
http://floppydays.libsyn.com/floppy-day ... chronicles

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Sat Apr 28, 2018 8:09 pm
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Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2013 6:54 pm
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Hennessy and Patteron's joint Turing lecture is now up. Edit: slides here as pdf.

John Hennessy and David Patterson 2017 ACM A.M. Turing Award Lecture

Image

Quote:
The video is organized in three sections where Patterson does the first, Hennessy, does the second, and they both do the third and the questions that follow:

    History of Architecture – Mainframe, Minicomputer, Microprocessor, RISC vs CISC, VLIW
    Current Architecture Challenges – Ending of Dennard Scaling and Moore’s Law, Security
    Future Architectural Opportunities – Domain Specific Languages and Architecture, Open Architectures, Agile Hardware Development
It’s an excellent lecture and well worth watching. Skip to the 6:10 point to get past the dead air and introduction:

- James Hamilton on his blog


Wed Jun 20, 2018 12:26 pm
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