Sophie Wilson, who co-developed the first ARM
microprocessor with Professor Steve
Furber of
Manchester University,
has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of
Engineering.
Three other women were elected Fellows of the Academy this year,
making 2009 a record year for the election of women to the
Academy.
The other three women were: Geotechnical engineer Professor
Sarah Springman, process engineer Professor Nina Thornhill, and
structural engineer Jane Wernick.
"The Academy is an ambitious organisation," said Academy
President Lord Browne of Madingley, "but none of our success would
be possible without our Fellows who give their time and world-class
expertise so selflessly in order to lead our work." The Academy
promotes the engineering and technological welfare of the UK.
When Wilson and Furber were asked to build a new microprocessor
from scratch for the Acorn Computer, Acorn CEO, Hermann Hauser
said: "I gave them two things which National, Intel and Motorola
had never given their design teams: the first was no money; the
second was no people. The only way they could do it was to keep it
really simple."
Furber designed the architecture, and Wilson developed the
instruction set. "While IBM spent months simulating their
instruction sets on large mainframes, Sophie did it all in her
head," said Hauser.
Now ARM is the best selling 32-bit microprocessor in the
world.
See also: Mannerisms, the blog of David
Manners. Updated twice daily, it's the distinctive, entertaining,
authoritative and never dull commentary on the semiconductor
industry, from someone who knows.
Sign up for the Mannerisms
eNewsletter.