IEEE Awards Booklet - 2017 - 23

2017 ieee technical field awards

IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits
Sponsored by the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society

Takao Nishitani and John S. Thompson

For pioneering real-time programmable digital signal processor architectures

The groundbreaking contributions of Takao Nishitani and John
S. Thompson to the development of the first single-chip, realtime programmable digital signal processors (DSPs) revolutionized communications networks and changed how society works,
is educated, and is entertained. While their work was conducted
independently (Nishitani at NEC and Thompson at Bell Labs), it
culminated with the simultaneous publication of two pioneering
papers at the 1980 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference and, later, the first commercial DSPs. To overcome the
bottlenecks that prevented a conventional microprocessor from
executing voiceband signal processing algorithms in real time,

they chose to modify the computation model developed from
the 1950s that had dominated computer architectures.Their concepts featured high-speed, real-time, multiply-accumulate operations via hardware multipliers and split-memory architectures to
independently and simultaneously address program instructions.
Their realization of DSPs has played an important role in the
development of the advanced networks and devices we take for
granted today.
An IEEE Life Fellow, Nishitani is a principal with LAISIP,
Kanagawa, Japan. An IEEE Life Senior Member,Thompson is retired in Tucson, AZ, USA.

IEEE Frederik Philips Award

IEEE Photonics Award

Sponsored by the IEEE Photonics Society

Gary L. Patton

John E. Bowers

For industry influence and leadership in
the development of leading-edge microelectronics technology and collaborative
research

For pioneering research in silicon photonics, including hybrid silicon lasers,
photonic integrated circuits, and ultralow-loss waveguides

Gary L. Patton's innovative leadership methods and pioneering contributions have resulted in the development and implementation
of semiconductor products that have impacted applications ranging from consumer handheld devices to high-performance servers.
Over the past 30 years, he has driven the industry's semiconductor roadmap through senior leadership positions within IBM and
GlobalFoundries where he led the development of leading-edge
technologies. Among his many technical leadership achievements,
Patton drove the introduction of high-performance embedded dynamic random access memory into IBM processors at 45 nm as
well as led the development of the IBM Alliance's 32/28-nm high-k
technologies currently used today in a wide range of consumer and
industrial applications. His pioneering work on silicon germanium
heterojunction bipolar transistors built the foundation for today's
semiconductor components used in cell phones, wireless networks,
and global positioning system devices.
An IEEE Fellow, Patton is chief technology oﬃcer and senior
vice president of Worldwide Research and Development with
GlobalFoundries, Malta, NY, USA.

The pioneering eﬀorts of John E. Bowers to advancing hybrid
silicon photonics is transforming the way computers connect and
how data moves around the world, improving business and consumer experiences via thin strands of fiber with silicon photonics
on either end. Bowers developed a bonding process that overcomes the challenges of trying to get light out of silicon and has
demonstrated high-quality photonic devices that can be manufactured at high volumes and low cost. His work on the hybrid
silicon laser has made photonic integrated circuits in silicon a reality, which is critical to enabling lower-cost, higher-speed, and
smaller-footprint devices to meet the bandwidth needs of Internet service providers and to create the data centers of the future.
An IEEE Fellow, Bowers is director of the Institute of Energy
Eﬃciency, University of Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.

23 | 2017 IEEE awards bOOkLET

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