John Cocke

Submitted by editor on Fri, 03/11/2011 - 00:57

John Cocke

John Cocke
Born May 30, 1925(1925-05-30)
Charlotte, North Carolina
Died July 16, 2002(2002-07-16) (aged 77)
Valhalla, New York
Nationality American
Fields Computer Science
Institutions IBM
Known for RISC
Notable awards ACM Turing Award
National Medal of Science

John Cocke (May 30, 1925 – July 16, 2002) was an American computer scientist recognized for his large contribution to computer architecture and optimizing compiler design. He is considered by many to be "the father of RISC architecture."

He attended Duke University, where he received his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1946 and his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 1953. Cocke spent his entire career as an industrial researcher for IBM, from 1956 to 1992.

Perhaps the project where his innovations were most noted was in the IBM 801 minicomputer, where his realization that matching the design of the architecture's instruction set to the relatively simple instructions actually emitted by compilers could allow high performance at a low cost.

He is one of the inventors of CYK algorithm (C for Cocke).

Cocke won the Eckert-Mauchly Award in 1985, ACM Turing Award in 1987, the National Medal of Technology in 1991 and the National Medal of Science in 1994, The Franklin Institute's Certificate of Merit in 1996, the Seymour Cray Computer Science and Engineering Award in 1999, and the The Benjamin Franklin Medal in 2000.

He was born in Charlotte, North Carolina and died in Valhalla, New York.

  1. ^ Schofield, Jack (2002-07-27). "John Cocke". The Guardian (Guardian Media Group). http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2002/jul/27/obituaries.games. Retrieved 2011-05-10. "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) [...]" 
  2. ^ National Science Foundation - The President's National Medal of Science
A. M. Turing Award laureates

Alan Perlis (1966) · Maurice Vincent Wilkes (1967) · Richard Hamming (1968) · Marvin Minsky (1969) · James H. Wilkinson (1970) · John McCarthy (1971) · Edsger W. Dijkstra (1972) · Charles Bachman (1973) · Donald Knuth (1974) · Allen Newell / Herbert Simon (1975) · Michael O. Rabin / Dana Scott (1976) · John Backus (1977) · Robert W. Floyd (1978) · Kenneth E. Iverson (1979) · Tony Hoare (1980) · Edgar F. Codd (1981) · Stephen Cook (1982) · Ken Thompson / Dennis Ritchie (1983) · Niklaus Wirth (1984) · Richard Karp (1985) · John Hopcroft / Robert Tarjan (1986) · John Cocke (1987) · Ivan Sutherland (1988) · William Kahan (1989) · Fernando J. Corbató (1990) · Robin Milner (1991) · Butler Lampson (1992) · Juris Hartmanis / Richard Stearns (1993) · Edward Feigenbaum / Raj Reddy (1994) · Manuel Blum (1995) · Amir Pnueli (1996) · Douglas Engelbart (1997) · Jim Gray (1998) · Fred Brooks (1999) · Andrew Yao (2000) · Ole-Johan Dahl / Kristen Nygaard (2001) · Ron Rivest / Adi Shamir / Leonard Adleman (2002) · Alan Kay (2003) · Vint Cerf / Bob Kahn (2004) · Peter Naur (2005) · Frances E. Allen (2006) · Edmund M. Clarke / E. Allen Emerson / Joseph Sifakis (2007) · Barbara Liskov (2008) · Charles P. Thacker (2009) · Leslie G. Valiant (2010)
United States National Medal of Science laureates
 Mathematical, statistical, and computer sciences
1960s

1963: Norbert Wiener · 1964: Solomon Lefschetz · H. Marston Morse · 1965: Oscar Zariski · 1966: John Milnor · 1967: Paul Cohen · 1968: Jerzy Neyman · 1969: William Feller
1970s

1970: Richard Brauer · 1973: John Tukey · 1974: Kurt Gödel · 1975: John W. Backus · Shiing-Shen Chern · George Dantzig · 1976: Kurt Otto Friedrichs · Hassler Whitney · 1979: Joseph Leo Doob · Donald E. Knuth
1980s

1982: Marshall Harvey Stone · 1983: Herman Goldstine · Isadore Singer · 1986: Peter Lax · Antoni Zygmund · 1987: Raoul Bott · Michael Freedman · 1988: Ralph E. Gomory · Joseph B. Keller · 1989: Samuel Karlin · Saunders MacLane · Donald C. Spencer
1990s

1990: George F. Carrier · Stephen Cole Kleene · John McCarthy · 1991: Alberto Calderón · 1992: Allen Newell · 1993: Martin David Kruskal · 1994: John Cocke · 1995: Louis Nirenberg · 1996: Richard Karp · Stephen Smale · 1997: Shing-Tung Yau · 1998: Cathleen Synge Morawetz · 1999: Felix Browder · Ronald R. Coifman
2000s

2000: John Griggs Thompson · Karen K. Uhlenbeck · 2001: Calyampudi R. Rao · Elias M. Stein · 2002: James G. Glimm · 2003: Carl R. de Boor · 2004: Dennis P. Sullivan · 2005: Bradley Efron · 2006: Hyman Bass · 2007: Leonard Kleinrock · Andrew J. Viterbi · 2009: David B. Mumford
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