John Cocke | |
|---|---|
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| Born | (1925-05-30)May 30, 1925 |
| Died | July 16, 2002(2002-07-16) (aged 77) |
| Education | Duke University (BS,MS,PhD) |
| Known for | RISC CYK algorithm |
| Awards | ACM Turing Award(1987) Computer Pioneer Award(1989) National Medal of Technology(1991) National Medal of Science(1994) IEEE John von Neumann Medal(1994) Computer History Museum Fellow (2002) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer Science |
| Institutions | IBM |
John Cocke (May 30, 1925 – July 16, 2002) was an Americancomputer scientist at IBM and recognized for his large contribution tocomputer architecture andoptimizing compiler design. He is considered by many to be "the father ofRISC architecture."[1] He won the 1987 ACMTuring Award.
He was born inCharlotte,North Carolina, US. He attendedDuke University, where he received hisbachelor's degree inmechanical engineering in 1946 and hisPh.D. in mathematics in 1956. Cocke spent his entire career as an industrial researcher forIBM, from 1956 to 1992.[2]
Perhaps the project where his innovations were most noted was in theIBM 801minicomputer, where his realization that matching the design of thearchitecture's instruction set to the relatively simple instructions actually emitted bycompilers could allow high performance at a low cost.
He is one of the inventors of theCYK algorithm (C for Cocke). He was also involved in the pioneeringspeech recognition andmachine translation work at IBM in the 1970s and 1980s, and is credited byFrederick Jelinek with originating the idea of using atrigramlanguage model for speech recognition.[3]
Cocke was appointedIBM Fellow in 1972. He won theEckert–Mauchly Award in 1985,ACM Turing Award in 1987,[4] theNational Medal of Technology in 1991 and theNational Medal of Science in 1994,[5][1]IEEE John von Neumann Medal in 1984,The Franklin Institute's Certificate of Merit in 1996, theSeymour Cray Computer Engineering Award in 1999, andThe Benjamin Franklin Medal in 2000. He was a member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences,[6] theAmerican Philosophical Society,[7] and theNational Academy of Sciences.[8]
In 2002, he was made a Fellow of theComputer History Museum "for his development and implementation of reduced instruction set computer architecture and program optimization technology."[9]
He died inValhalla,New York, US.
Cocke's idea was to use fewer instructions, but design chips that performed simple instructions very quickly. [...] Later, this approach became known as reduced instruction set computing (Risc) [...]
