Conway's innovations at Xerox PARC [Palo Verde Research Center] in the 1970s simplified and demystified a once extremely complex process of silicon-chip design, laying the foundation for much of the modern-day silicon-chip design and design-tool revolution in the 1980s. Many chip designers did their first VLSI design projects using the government's MOSIS prototyping system based on Conway's work at PARC. High-tech companies and computing methods worldwide now are grounded in her work.[1]
Because of her you are able to read this on your computer and every other device that uses a microprocessor uses one of her inventions. The text book that she co-authored became the standard that thousands of engineering used, over 70,000 copies were printed.
But she didn’t stop there…
Some may more accurately describe her as a pioneer in microelectronic chip design. Most of today's chip designers learned their craft from the textbook Introduction to VLSI Systems, co-authored by Lynn Conway and Prof. Carver Mead of Caltech. It foreshadowed today's still-evolving SoC design methodologies. [1]
But that is not the only major research that she did. She was involved in research for the Department of Defense.
In the early 1980s, Conway was a key technical architect and leader for the Defense Department's Strategic Computing Initiative (SCI) at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). SCI was a major research program in high-performance computing, autonomous systems technology, and intelligent weapons technology. Working under Dr. Robert Cooper, Director of DARPA and Assistant Secretary of Defense, Conway led the effort that produced the Strategic Computing Plan published in November 1983.
More recently, Conway has focused on visual communications and control probing for basic system and user-interface concepts as applicable to hybridized internet/broadband-cable communications. She has five U.S. patents for her visual communications inventions [1]
She didn’t stop here either…
I joined the University of Michigan as Associate Dean of Engineering and Professor of EECS in 1985. Partly this was a move to break out of the Bay Area, and "get a life", which I finally managed to do. I've just stepped down from active faculty status here at Michigan, as Professor Emerita of EECS. [2]
But where her career began is even more amazing…
Until recently, many in her field didn't know another facet of Conway's life. They didn't know that in 1965, at IBM, she invented dynamic instruction scheduling (DIS), a powerful method for issuing multiple out-of-order instructions per machine cycle in supercomputers. By solving this fundamental computer architecture problem, she made possible the creation of the first true superscalar computer, the IBM ACS-1. Although that superscalar computer was eventually cancelled, her DIS invention survived and is now a classic hardware method for enhancing the performance of VLSI superscalar processors, such as those made by Compaq, HP, Intel, MIPS, and Sun. [1]
Her spans over three decades and at each point in her career she was in the fore front of her profession and for that leadership she received many honors.
Lynn's won many awards for her work, including the Electronics Award for Achievement, the Wetherill Medal of the Franklin Institute, the Pender Award of the Univ. of Pennsylvania, SWE's National Achievement Award, the Secretary of Defense Meritorious Achievement Award, recognition as Xerox Research Fellow, an honorary doctorate from Trinity College, election as a Fellow of the IEEE and election to the National Academy of Engineering. [2]
To see what made her career even more remarkable read her autobiography http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/RetrospectiveT.html
1: Electronic Design, Doris Kilbane, Lynn Conway: A Trailblazer On Professional, Personal Levels; Retrieved April 11, 2007, http://www.elecdesign.com/Articles/Index.cfm?AD=1&ArticleID=5833
2: People Involved with ACS, Mark Smotherman, Retrieved April 11, 2007, http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/acs_people.html
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