Milestone-Proposal talk:Development of the Bellmac Microprocessor, 1980

Advocates’ Checklist

1. Is the proposal for an achievement rather than for a person? Yes. If the citation includes a person's name, have the proposers provided the required justification for inclusion of the person's name? N/A
2. Was the proposed achievement a significant advance rather than an incremental improvement to an existing technology? Yes.
3. Were there prior or contemporary achievements of a similar nature? To some extent, yes. If so, have they been properly considered in the background information and in the citation? Yes.
4. Has the achievement truly led to a functioning, useful, or marketable technology? Yes.
5. Is the proposal adequately supported by significant references (minimum of five) such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or citations to pages in scholarly books? Yes. At least one of the references should be from a peer-reviewed scholarly book or journal article. The full text of the material, not just the references, shall be present. If the supporting texts are copyright-encumbered and cannot be posted on the ETHW for intellectual property reasons, the proposers shall email a copy to the History Center so that it can be forwarded to the Advocate. If the Advocate does not consider the supporting references sufficient, the Advocate may ask the proposer(s) for additional ones.
6. Are the scholarly references sufficiently recent? Yes.
7. Does the proposed citation explain why the achievement was successful and impactful? Yes.
8. Does the proposed citation include important technical aspects of the achievement? Yes.
9. Is the proposed citation readable and understandable by the general public? Yes.
10. Will the citation be read correctly in the future by only using past tense? Yes. Does the citation wording avoid statements that read accurately only at the time that the proposal is written? Yes.
11. Does the proposed plaque site fulfill the requirements? Yes.
12. Is the proposal quality comparable to that of IEEE publications? Yes.
13. Are any scientific and technical units correct (e.g., km, mm, hertz, etc.)? N/A Are acronyms correct and properly upper-cased or lower-cased? N/A Are the letters in any acronym explained in the title or the citation? N/A
14. Are date formats correct as specified in Section 6 of Milestones Program Guidelines? Helpful Hints on Citations, plaque locations Yes.
15. Do the year(s) appearing in the citation fall within the range of the year(s) included at the end of the title? Yes.
16. Note that it is the Advocate's responsibility to confirm that the independent reviewers have no conflict of interest (e.g., that they do not work for a company or a team involved in the achievement being proposed, that they have not published with the proposer(s), and have not worked on a project related to the funding of the achievement). An example of a way to check for this would be to search reviewers' publications on IEEE Xplore. Done.

Re: Advocates’ Checklist -- Bberg (talk) 19:47, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

See my responses in the Checklist above that are embedded in boldface. Brian Berg, Milestones Subcommittee Chair

Independent Expert Reviewers’ Checklist

1. Is suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate?
2. Is evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Plaque Citation?
3. Does proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?
4. Were there similar or competing achievements? If so, have the proposers adequately described these and their relationship to the achievement being proposed?
5. Have proposers shown a clear benefit to humanity?

In answering these questions, the History Committee asks that independent expert reviewers apply a similar level of rigor to that used to peer-review an article, or evaluate a research proposal. Some elaboration is desirable. Of course the Committee would welcome any additional observations that you may have regarding this proposal.

Submission and Approval Log

Submitted date: 15 November 2024
Advocate approval date: 19 November 2024
History Committee approval date: 4 December 2024
Board of Directors approval date:

Proposal Ready -- Condry (talk) 20:56, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

This proposal is ready to submit.

Re: Proposal Ready -- Administrator4 (talk) 17:28, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Proposal incomplete and has been unsubmitted by History Center staff

Expert Review #1: Dr. David Patterson -- Bberg (talk) 19:54, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Is the suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate? Yes.
Is the evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Plaque Citation? Yes.
Does the proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement? Yes.
Were there similar or competing achievements? Yes, to some extent. If so, have the proposers adequately described these and their relationship to the achievement being proposed? Yes.
Have the proposers shown a clear benefit to humanity? Yes.

David Patterson received BA, MS, and PhD degrees from UCLA. He is a UC Berkeley Pardee professor emeritus, a Google distinguished engineer, the RIOS Laboratory Director, and until recently the RISC-V International Vice-Chair. His most successful research projects were likely Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC), Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID), and Network of Workstations (NOW). All three projects helped lead to multibillion-dollar industries. He received service awards for his roles as ACM President, Berkeley CS Division Chair, and CRA Chair and awards for his teaching from UC Berkeley, ACM, and IEEE. The most prominent of his seven books is Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach. He and his co-author John Hennessy shared the 2017 ACM A.M Turing Award, the 2021 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award, and the 2022 NAE Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering. The Turing Award is often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Computing” and the Draper Prize is considered a “Nobel Prize of Engineering.”

Expert Review #2: Dr. Nam Sung Kim -- Bberg (talk) 19:59, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Is the suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate? Yes.
Is the evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Plaque Citation? Yes.
Does the proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement? Yes.
Were there similar or competing achievements? Not that I am aware of. If so, have the proposers adequately described these and their relationship to the achievement being proposed? N/A
Have the proposers shown a clear benefit to humanity? Yes.

Nam Sung Kim is the W.J. ‘Jerry’ Sanders III – Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Endowed Chair Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and a Fellow of ACM, IEEE, and NAI. From 2018 to 2020, he took a leave of absence to be a Sr. Vice President at a major memory manufacturing company where he led the development of next-generation DRAM products, including the industry's first HBM-PIM that will play a significant role in shaping the future computing landscape. Prior to joining the University of Illinois in the fall of 2015, he was the recipient of many awards including the 2017 ACM/IEEE Most Influential International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA) Paper Award, and the 2021 SIGMICRO Test of Time Award. He is a Hall of Fame member of all three major computer architecture conferences: IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA) , MICRO, and ISCA.

Support of Milestone Proposal -- Jbart64 (talk) 18:38, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I have reviewed the milestone proposal and support it, including the final edits and revisions. The two expert reviews have been posted and both support the proposal. Dave Bart

Slightly revised citation -- Dmichelson (talk) 09:42, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

I strongly recommend the following revision to the citation.

Developed between 1976 and 1982, the Bell Laboratories BELLMAC-32 microprocessor series introduced many seminal design concepts, including 32-bit wide internal and external transfers, high-speed domino circuits which reduced complex logic gate delay times, a twin-tub CMOS process for improved power efficiency and performance, interconnect-centric logic design for signal delay reduction, gate-matrix layout which increased density, and instructions which implemented certain UNIX operating system and C programming language operations.

(68 words)

The last sentence in the previous version conveys little information and can be summed up by incorporating the word "seminal" into the first sentence.

The instructions make clear that 70 words is an absolute limit and that closer to 60 is preferred.

Re: Slightly revised citation -- Bberg (talk) 00:45, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for this suggestion for a revised citation. The proposer's team has approved this wording, as have I, and it is now included on the main page.

Brian Berg, BELLMAC-32 Proposal Advocate / Milestones Subcommittee Chair

Re: Re: Slightly revised citation -- Jbart64 (talk) 14:15, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

I support the revised version from Dave Michelson. It is well worded and per Brian Berg it is acceptable to the proposers. Dave Bart