Silicon Valley Turns Out to Honor Top Technologists

35:56 | Aron Pruiett | Oct 19th, 2007 12:26pm |

Silicon Valley is not known for paying much attention to its own history but things are changing. The Computer History Museum’s 2007 Fellow Awards was sold out as much of Silicon Valley’s aristocracy turned out for a $250 fund raising dinner that paid tribute to four top technologists: Morris Chang, John Hennessy, David A. Patterson and Charles Thacker.

Morris Chang helped create the fabless chip industry. And in doing so, he created a massive innovation platform by enabling small bands of chip designers to buy production time as they needed it. Chip companies no longer needed to own and maintain hugely expensive chip fabs.

John Hennessy helped develop the RISC microprocessor, whose features are found in all modern microprocessors. As president of Stanford University, he has made huge contributions to education, and the creation of a student body that has gone on to found many of Silicon Valley’s largest companies. And his work has helped generate huge licensing revenue for the university.

David Patterson made important contributions to microprocessor design and RAID data storage technologies. As head of Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley, he has helped educate generations of computer engineers.

Charles Thacker helped create ...