David Papworth Receives 2022 ACM Chuck Thacker Breakthrough in Computing Award

ACM has named David B. Papworth, formerly of Intel (retired), as the recipient of the 2022 ACM Charles P. “Chuck” Thacker Breakthrough in Computing Award. Papworth is recognised for fundamental groundbreaking contributions to Intel’s P6 out-of-order engine and Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) processors.

The ACM Charles P. “Chuck” Thacker Breakthrough in Computing Award recognises individuals or groups who have made surprising, disruptive or leapfrog contributions to computing ideas or technologies. The award is accompanied by a $100,000 cash prize, with financial support provided by Microsoft.

“The introduction of Intel’s P6 microarchitecture in 1995 was an important milestone during a time when the personal computing software and hardware industry really started to take off,” said ACM President Yannis Ioannidis. 

“As the lead developer of the P6 microarchitecture, David Papworth was one of the unsung heroes of the decade and his contributions are still in use today. The original P6 not only fitted 5.5 million transistors on a single chip, but it was significantly faster than its predecessors. Papworth’s work truly fits the criteria of a ‘leapfrog advance in computing technology’ that the ACM Breakthrough Award celebrates. Recently, in tributes to the late Gordon Moore, many reflected on Moore’s prediction that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit would double every two years. That Moore’s law has held true for so many years is testament to outstanding engineers like David Papworth.”

Read the ACM news release

Margo Seltzer Named ACM Athena Lecturer

ACM has Margo Seltzer, a Professor at the University of British Columbia, as the 2023-2024 ACM Athena Lecturer. Seltzer is recognised for foundational research in file and storage systems, pioneering research in data provenance, impactful software contributions in Berkeley DB, and tireless dedication to service and mentoring. 

The ACM Athena Lecturer Award celebrates women researchers who have made fundamental contributions to computer science. It includes a $25,000 honorarium provided by Two Sigma. The Athena Lecturer is invited to present a lecture at an ACM event. Each year, the Athena Lecturer honors a preeminent woman computer scientist who the gives an invited talk at a major ACM conference of her choice.

Read the ACM news release

On Demand: Watch the ACM TechTalk with Steve McConnell 

View the TechTalk, “Individual Contributor to Software VP: Four Career Transitions, Many Challenges,” with Steve McConnell, CEO and Chief Software Engineer at Construx Software–now on demand. In this session, the award-winning author of Code Complete describes the detailed challenges involved in each transitioning from I.C. to technical lead, then to manager, then to director, and ultimately to VP. He also discusses the key factors needed to navigate each transition successfully, presenting a holistic model for understanding how roles, responsibilities and skills must evolve as a software professional’s career progresses. 

Register to view the TechTalk here

Watch the ACM TechTalk with Matt Welsh 

Register for the TechTalk, “Large Language Models and The End of Programming,” with Matt Welsh, CEO and Co-founder of Fixie, taking place May 9, 2023, 12:00 pm ET. The field of Computer Science is headed for a major upheaval with the rise of large AI models such as ChatGPT, and a future in which it will no longer be necessary to write computer programs. Welsh believes that most software will eventually be replaced by AI models that, given an appropriate description of a task, will directly execute that task, without requiring the creation or maintenance of conventional software. This talk will explore the implications of this prediction, drawing on recent research into the cognitive and task execution capabilities of large language models.

Register for the TechTalk here and visit the TechTalks Archive for our full archive of past TechTalks.

Featured ACM Member: Ranveer Chandra

Ranveer Chandra is the Managing Director of Research for Industry, CTO of Agri-Food, and Head of Networking Research at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington. He previously served as the Chief Scientist of Microsoft Azure Global. His research is in wireless systems, data center networks, and systems that transform different industries including agriculture, energy, and supply chains. In his interview, Chandra discusses his work at Microsoft Research, trying to improve the battery life of mobile devices, and what advances in wireless networking he sees in the future.

Read Chandra’s interview here

Featured ACM Member: Jun Kato

Jun Kato is a Senior Researcher at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and the Technical Advisor at Arch Inc., an animation production company. He is interested in the broad area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) with a focus on designing user-interfaces and integrated environments to support creativity. He has also made contributions in related areas including programming languages, computer graphics and multimedia. In his People of ACM interview, Kato discusses his role at AIST, designing user interfaces and integrated environments for creativity support, how new AI tools are impacting multimedia generation and more. 

Read Kato’s interview here

ACM ByteCast Interviews Holly Urban

ACM ByteCast is ACM’s series of podcast interviews with researchers, practitioners, and innovators who are at the intersection of computing research and practice is ACM’s series of podcast interviews with researchers, practitioners, and innovators who are at the intersection of computing research and practice. In this episode—part of a special collaboration between ACM ByteCast and the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA)’s For Your Informatics podcast—hosts Sabrina Hsueh and Sullafa Kadura welcome Holly Urban, a pediatrician and clinical informaticist. Most recently, Urban was Chief Medical Informatics Officer (CMIO) at Oracle Cerner before recently starting a new role as VP of Clinical Product Design at CliniComp. In the interview, she describes how she became interested in medical informatics, product design and management, and more.

Listen here or wherever you get podcasts.

Featured ACM Distinguished Speaker: Kiran Gunnam

Kiran Gunnam an innovative technology leader with vision and passion who effectively connects with individuals and groups. His breakthrough contributions are in the areas of advanced error correction systems, storage-class memory systems, and computer vision-based localisation & navigation systems. He has helped drive organisations to become industry leaders through ground-breaking technologies. He has 86 issued US patents and 100+ patent applications/invention disclosures on algorithms, architectures, and real-time low-cost implementations. His lectures include “Co-Design of Algorithms and Architectures for Machine Learning Inference at the Edge for Video Analytics,” “Domain Specific Accelerator (DSA) architectures for Signal Processing, Communications and Machine Learning,” and more. He is available to speak through the ACM Distinguished Speaker Program.

For more information about Gunnam, please visit his DSP speaker information page.