 | Thisbiography of a living personneeds additionalcitations forverification. Please help by addingreliable sources.Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced orpoorly sourcedmust be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentiallylibelous. Find sources: "Stephen Trimberger" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(June 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Stephen Trimberger | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1955 (age 69–70) |
| Alma mater | California Institute of Technology (Ph.D.) |
| Known for | Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology |
| Awards | NAE Member (2016) IEEE Fellow ACM Fellow |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer science |
Stephen "Steve" Trimberger (born 1955) is an American computer scientist, electrical engineer, philanthropist, andprolific inventor with 250 US utility patents as of August 26, 2021.[1] He is a DARPA program manager of the microsystems technology office.[2]
Trimberger grew up inSacramento, California, and earned his B.S. in Engineering and Applied Science from theCalifornia Institute of Technology (Caltech) and M.S. in Information and Computer Science from theUniversity of California at Irvine.[citation needed] He later got his Ph.D. from theCalifornia Institute of Technology in 1983, after defending his thesis on theAutomated Performance Optimization of Custom Integrated Circuits.[3]
While attending Caltech, Trimberger joined thePlanet-Crossing Asteroid Survey (PCAS) project with principal investigatorGene Shoemaker, operated byEleanor "Glo" Helin. PCAS searched for asteroids that could potentially impact planets, including Earth. In recognition of his contributions to this project,minor planet 2990 was named "Trimberger."
Trimberger joinedVLSI Technology in 1982, where, as a member of the original Design Technology group, he developed various computer-aided design software, including interactive tools, simulation, physical design automation, and logical design automation. During this time, he wroteAn Introduction to CAD for VLSI,[4] collecting and explaining the fundamental algorithms and techniques used in the early days of the CAE industry.
Since 1988, he has been employed atXilinx, a fabless semiconductor company inSan Jose, California. He was a member of the architecture definition group for the Xilinx XC4000 field-programmable gate array (FPGA), the first FPGA with dedicated arithmetic and memory.[5] At the same time, he was the technical leader for the XC4000 design automation software. He led the architecture definition group for the Xilinx XC4000X device families. He developed a time-multiplexed FPGA[6] and software[7] to map to it in the 1990s, long before Tabula commercialized the time-folded FPGA. He is an inventor with approximately thirty patents in this area. In the early 1990s, he edited and co-wroteField-Programmable Gate Array Technology,[8] introducing the first generation of academic researchers to the industrial side of programmable-logic architecture, tools and design.
He designed the bitstream security system for the Xilinx Virtex-II [US Patent #7,058,177], the first bitstream encryption deployed in FPGAs.[citation needed] His inventions on that security system are the basis of security in all commercial FPGAs from Xilinx and others.[citation needed] He was also instrumental in bringing 3D packaging from a lab curiosity to a product in the mid-2000s [US Patent 7,605,458]. This was deployed by Xilinx as Stacked Silicon Interconnect Technology (SSIT).[9]Trimberger led the Xilinx Advanced Development group for many years and is currently Xilinx Fellow in Xilinx Research Labs in San Jose.
Trimberger has written three books on computer-aided design for integrated circuits and FPGAs. He has written dozens of papers on design automation and FPGA architectures.[10] He is a four-time winner of theRoss Freeman Award, Xilinx’s annual award for technical innovation.[citation needed]
He was named aFellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2012[11] for his contributions to circuits, architectures andsoftware technology forfield-programmable gate arrays. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2016 for his contributions to solid-state electronics.[citation needed]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Other | |
