Jeffrey Welser on LinkedIn: Robert Dennard
Jeffrey Welser
In addition to being a preeminent inventor and deep technologist, Bob was a wonderful mentor to me and many others at #ibm early in our careers.  He always…
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It is with great sadness that we share news of the passing of an exceptional IBMer, Robert Dennard. Many IBMers, researchers, scientists, and colleagues across the industry had the great fortune to work with – and learn from – Bob during his 50-plus year career at IBM. Brilliant, creative, passionate, and generous with his time and wisdom, Bob epitomized the spirit of IBM. His contributions — not just to IBM but to science and technology — laid the foundation for modern computing. Most notably, Bob is recognized as the inventor of DRAM, shepherding his hypothesis about the potential impact of storing a bit of information in a single transistor and capacitor cell into the invention of dynamic random-access memory in the 1960s. DRAM spearheaded exponential progress in memory capacity and speed, and catalyzed what is today a global market expected to soon surpass $100 billion. For those who did not have the benefit of working with Bob during his career here, know that his work ethic, mentorship and ingenuity helped shape the culture at IBM Research, and that his presence is still felt. As he and colleagues grappled with the related challenges of scaling and power consumption, Bob offered, “Yes, there is an end to scaling. But there is no end to creativity.” To learn more about Bob’s enduring legacy, and to share your fond memories and reflections, please head to the page below: https://ibm.co/3JUoNCa

In total, 60 authors who contributed to 16 of the 37 papers accepted at CGO 2024 are researchers working in the industry. In line with an enduring tradition, CGO 2024 boasts robust participation from industry researchers, with a total of 60 authors contributing to 16 out of the 37 presented papers. These researchers are affiliated with renowned entities such as Huawei, Intel Corporation, Meta, Microsoft, Google, AMD, Enflame, Arm, Codeplay Software, Uber, NVIDIA, and Mitsubishi Electric. The substantial involvement of the industry in CGO is no happenstance; compilers and runtime environments hold pivotal significance for the information technology sector. The evolution witnessed in computer science is invariably the outcome of extensive engineering effort dedicated to the design and implementation of code generation technologies. Check the program: https://lnkd.in/dfqxpjgz #research #academia #compiler #hardware #software #science

Robert Dennard: The Man Behind DRAM and the Evolution of Modern Computing Robert Dennard, an IBM researcher, invented dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), a revolutionary memory cell used in nearly every computer and electronic device today. Dennard’s work also led to the formulation of Dennard’s law, which predicted that as transistors get smaller, their performance per watt would increase, enabling faster, more efficient computers. However, by 2005, as transistors began to leak and consume more energy, Dennard’s law broke down. Despite this, Dennard’s contributions have significantly shaped modern technology and the culture at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center. Dennard passed away in 2024 at the age of 91. https://lnkd.in/e_Vj_JC2

Onur's work with Yale Patt on Runahead execution architectures played a very important conceptual if not quite commercially practical role in the design of small processors. Basically after the Intel P6 (Pentium) and Alpha EV6 era, we started realizing that small cores - maybe a souped up 486 - maybe a souped up EV5-type processor would be enough to play a DVD or run a cellphone. Now when you're running code in a tight loop and streaming data sequentially everything works out nicely. Most code however isn't a tight loop, and doesn't have sequential memory accesses. The observation was, look these out of order cpus are basically really good at hiding memory access latency by prefetching. What if we could have the prefetching part without the overhead of out of order execution? (I briefly worked on a side project at Intel trying to adapt this idea to a different processor.) Onur has kept doing great work. Here's a recent interesting lecture. https://lnkd.in/gMvjAxdQ

I’m happy to share that I’ve obtained a new certification: Quantum Computing from IBM! "Passionate about the cutting-edge field of quantum computing, I specialize in exploring the transformative potential of quantum technologies. With a background in relevant fields or expertise, I am dedicated to driving innovation and solving complex computational challenges using quantum principles. My expertise lies in specific areas of quantum computing, such as algorithms, hardware development, or applications], where I leverage my skills to propel advancements in this revolutionary field. I am thankful for IBM that they offered this amazing course. #QuantumComputing #IBM #ComputerScience #Innovation