David Andrew Patterson (born November 16, 1947) is an American computer scientist and academic who has held the position of professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley since 1976. He is a computer pioneer. He announced retirement in 2016 after serving nearly forty years, becoming a distinguished software engineer at Google.[5][6] He currently is vice chair of the board of directors of the RISC-V Foundation,[7] and the Pardee Professor of Computer Science, Emeritus at UC Berkeley.[8]
Patterson is noted for his pioneering contributions to reduced instruction set computer (RISC) design, having coined the term RISC, and by leading the Berkeley RISC project.[9] As of 2018, 99% of all new chips use a RISC architecture.[10][11] He is also noted for leading the research on redundant arrays of inexpensive disks (RAID) storage, with Randy Katz.[12]
Past chair of the Computer Science Division at U.C. Berkeley and the Computing Research Association, he served on the Information Technology Advisory Committee for the U.S. President (PITAC) during 2003–05 and was elected president of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for 2004–06.[19]
Notable PhD students
He has advised several notable Ph.D. students,[13][20] including:
David Ditzel, founder and former president of Transmeta
Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau, Grace Wahba professor and Chair of Computer Sciences at UW-Madison.
Selected publications
Patterson co-authored seven books, including two with John L. Hennessy on computer architecture: Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach (6 editions—latest is ISBN978-0128119051) and Computer Organization and Design RISC-V Edition: the Hardware/Software Interface (5 editions—latest is ISBN978-0128122761). They have been widely used as textbooks for graduate and undergraduate courses since 1990.[21] His most recent book is with Andrew Waterman on the open architectureRISC-V: The RISC-V Reader: An Open Architecture Atlas (1st Edition) (ISBN978-0999249109).
Anderson, Thomas; Culler, David; Patterson, David (February 1995). "A Case for NOW (Networks of Workstations)". IEEE Micro. 15 (1): 54–64. doi:10.1109/40.342018. S2CID6225201.
At the 2013 California Raw Championships, he set the American Powerlifting Record for the state of California for his weight class and age group in bench press, dead lift, squat, and all three combined lifts.[26]
On February 12, 2015, IEEE installed a plaque at UC Berkeley to commemorate the contribution of RISC-I[27] in Soda Hall at UC Berkeley. The plaque reads:
IEEE Milestone in Electrical and Computer Engineering
First RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) Microprocessor
UC Berkeley students designed and built the first VLSI reduced instruction-set computer in 1981. The simplified instructions of RISC-I reduced the hardware for instruction decode and control, which enabled a flat 32-bit address space, a large set of registers, and pipelined execution. A good match to C programs and the Unix operating system, RISC-I influenced instruction sets widely used today, including those for game consoles, smartphones and tablets.
On March 21, 2018, he was awarded the 2017 ACM A.M. Turing Award together with John L. Hennessy for developing RISC.[10] The award attributed them for pioneering "a systematic, quantitative approach to the design and evaluation of computer architectures with enduring impact on the microprocessor industry".[11]
From 2003 to 2012 he rode in the annual Waves to Wine MS charity event as part of Bike MS; a 2-day cycling adventure. He was the top fundraiser in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012.[30]
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