The Microprocessor: Its Characteristics Ten Years from now
Yale Patt, University of Texas-Austin
Friday April 1, 2005
2:30pm - SENSQ 5317
Refreshments at 2:00pm.
Abstract
The number of transistors on a single chip has grown from 2,300 on the original Intel 4004 to almost 300 million today. In just a few years, the solid-state circuits people are projecting more than one billion transistors, and a clock frequency in excess of 10 GHz. With so much capability possible to put on a single chip, what will we find there? This talk explores the options, always from the point of view of addressing fundamentals; i.e., elementary, but hopefully not superficial.
Biography of Speaker
Yale Patt earned B.S. from Northeastern, M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford in Electrical Engineering. He is a Fellow of both the IEEE and the ACM. He received the Emmanuel R. Piore Award (one of the IEEE Fields Medals) in 1995, the ACM/IEEE Eckert-Mauchly Award in 1996, and the IEEE W.W.McDowell Award in 1999, and the ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award in 2000. At Michigan, his commitment to teaching was recognized by the Outstanding Professor of the Year Award from Michigan undergraduates in 1992, the Excellence in Teaching Award both from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (1995) and from the College of Engineering (1996), and the Arthur Thurneau Professorship in 1998. At Texas, he has received the Texas Excellence Teaching Award and the Dad's Association Teaching Fellowship, both in 2002. He was named Outstanding ACM Lecturer in 1998-1999 and in 2000-2001.
Yale Patt enjoys equally teaching undergraduate required courses and advanced graduate seminars. He directs the research of 13 Ph.D. students in high performance computer architecture and implementation. He has consulted extensively in the computer industry for the past 30 years, helping major manufacturers design high peformance microprocessors and systems. He is vitally concerned with the way we introduce computing to undergraduate computer science and engineering majors. In that regard, he developed (with Professor Kevin Compton) EECS 100 at Michigan in 1995, and ECE 306 at Texas in 2000. He taught ECE 306 to 375 students at Texas in Fall 2000, to 450 students in Fall 2002, and to 395 students in Fall 2004.