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John Hennessy named chairman of Alphabet/Google

455 points| teklaperry | 8 years ago |spectrum.ieee.org

101 comments

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[+] luckydude|8 years ago|reply
This guy is one of my heroes, I could not be happier. Go him. The H&P book on computer architecture is a book that changed my life. He is like Knuth except that I understand what he says. The Knuth stuff, I get it, it's profound, but I never got it. It was too hard. H&P, they laid it out in ways that I could understand. I'm not stupid but I'm not that smart, I really loved that book, it was written in a way that not so smart people get it.

If there was a way I could say "go you", yeah, I want to do that. He's a great guy, has done great work, go him.

And all that said, I bet this is not a "go him" job, I bet he makes a difference, maybe a huge one, maybe not so huge, but I bet he makes a difference. Let's come back in 5 years, I bet he will have made stuff better.

[+] timb07|8 years ago|reply
I too loved "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach", and read it all the way through before the semester even started.

Each chapter had a pithy quote at the start, and my favorite was the excerpt from the EDSAC instruction set:

Z -- Halt and Ring Bell: Stop the machine and ring the warning bell

[+] PaulKeeble|8 years ago|reply
I found reading the Art of Computer programming books wasn't that bad. If you ignore the quantative analysis for the algorithms and just look into the algorithms themselves then there are a lot of gems in here that you just don't find anywhere else. If you want to learn how to prove the algorithm runtime then there is obviously a lot more to the books, but for finding other algorithms and data structures it is a great tome of options and its organised in a way to just dip into when you have a particular problem.

Don't ignore the books on the assumption its too hard as that wasn't my experience of them.

[+] cowsandmilk|8 years ago|reply
I see a new 6th edition came out in December 2017

Are the new editions worth it? My library lets me get an e-book of the 4th edition from 2007 for free, so are the last decade of added material worth buying it?

[+] bpicolo|8 years ago|reply
Computer organization and design was by far my favorite class (at UMich). It really played well to the puzzle of engineering that makes me love the field in the first place.
[+] webkike|8 years ago|reply
C'mon, all you are doing is selling yourself short
[+] Steeeve|8 years ago|reply
Hennessy was an incredible steward at Stanford, and I'm 100% sure that he will be a difference maker at Alphabet. I don't see him taking the position if he didn't have an incredible vision for the future that he could drive.

The intro to this video talks a bit about his accomplishments as president.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApTQ1bfKXyY

This video is probably more in line with the interests of the community here (Stanford Seminar - Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders: John Hennessy of Stanford University):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB3oAg0wuYg

I was in the audience when he announced the launching of the Knight-Hennessey scholarship. It was an incredible speech. He was always an incredible fundraiser, but putting together a $750M fully endowed scholarship program is a heck of a way to say goodbye to the university.

[+] thomasahle|8 years ago|reply
> I don't see him taking the position if he didn't have an incredible vision for the future that he could drive.

How much influence does a chairman really have on the the vision though? Isn't that more of the CEO's business?

I suppose the board picks the CEO, but that spot doesn't appear to be changing anytime soon.

[+] yeukhon|8 years ago|reply
His CV page [1] is clean and quite up-to-date. Not sure if he handles the edit himself or not, but I find the page's design clean compared to a lot of the professors' out there. I just think it's interesting to mention here.

[1]: https://web.stanford.edu/~hennessy/cv.html

[+] contras1970|8 years ago|reply 

    <html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml"
    xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
    xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word"
    xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml"
    xmlns:mv="http://macVmlSchemaUri" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">

    <head>
    <meta name=Title content=cv.html>
    <meta name=Keywords content="">
    <meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=unicode">
    <meta name=ProgId content=Word.Document>
    <meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 14">
    <meta name=Originator content="Microsoft Word 14">
    <link rel=File-List href="cv_files/filelist.xml">
    <link rel=Edit-Time-Data href="cv_files/editdata.mso">
    <!--[if !mso]>
    ...
[+] vanderZwan|8 years ago|reply
I do love how these kind of CV sites always seem to abhor any CSS styling that would not be understood by a twenty year old browser.

EDIT: and now contrast1970 has solved the mystery!

[+] jessriedel|8 years ago|reply
Most profs don't want to maintain an HTML CV.
[+] donogh|8 years ago|reply
Impressive! Only negative: the "Slides from Recent Talks" section is all broken links.
[+] dmoy|8 years ago|reply
So now both H & P working at Google? (Though I don't know enough about corporate board stuff to tell if chairman is "working for")
[+] cbHXBY1D|8 years ago|reply
Pretty crazy! Hopefully they get Patterson to work on some novel computer architectures. TPUs are very cool but they are not for consumers.
[+] stochastic_monk|8 years ago|reply
Who are "H & P"? I haven't been able to track down who the P is.
[+] econner|8 years ago|reply
He was also President of Stanford for a bunch of years.
[+] deanCommie|8 years ago|reply
Weird.. In a time when people are extra tuned to the relationship between technology and society and whether just because we can build something, should we (information bubbles, etc), it's strange that Alphabet would pick someone so out of touch with their impact to the long tail of humanity.

At least that's the impression I got of Hennessey from Malcolm Gladwell's podcast http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/06-my-little-hundred-...

[+] kev009|8 years ago|reply
I'm glad he got his books updated with the RISC-V editions before this
[+] gxs|8 years ago|reply
>>RISC pioneer John Hennessy’s side hustle gets serious

I couldn't help but get a chuckle out of the subtitle.

One day I hope my side hustles involve helping to run an $800B company.

[+] baldajan|8 years ago|reply
I have no issues with John Hennessy, but I’m surprised they didn’t give the chairman position to Larry Page, who’s CEO and a Co-Founder. I wonder what’s preventing him from taking over full control...
[+] BooneJS|8 years ago|reply
Sarbanes-Oxley Act strongly encourages non-Employee Chairman of the Board. It’s the direction that well-governed companies are moving.
[+] samfisher83|8 years ago|reply
Paige and Brin have enough voting power to pretty much make any major decision.
[+] erikpukinskis|8 years ago|reply
What’s going on with Schmidt? Was this planned?
[+] ocdtrekkie|8 years ago|reply
Schmidt has always been one of the people politically greasing the wheels for Google. You most often see his involvement where the politicians are. It very much sounds like in his "technical advisor" role, he'll continue to do that. He said he was interested in 'science and technology issues' and 'philanthropy'. That reads as "politics" to me.
[+] oh_sigh|8 years ago|reply
He stepped down at the end of 2017 in order to focus on his charities(according to the press release). But, his daughter did die last year as well, perhaps that is the cause for him refocusing his life
[+] ggg9990|8 years ago|reply
Could be as simple as when you’re ludicrously rich and have been doing something for awhile you can get bored, especially if you’re not the founder or otherwise heavily emotionally invested in it.
[+] natch|8 years ago|reply
There were some rumors.

Duckduckgo is your friend.

[+] MrBingley|8 years ago|reply
Does this mean good things for RISC-V?
[+] flormmm|8 years ago|reply
Amazing and Awesome. Congrats.
[+] justchilly|8 years ago|reply
Correct me if I'm wrong but didnt Hennessy, while President of Stanford, agree to give away university-owned page rank IP to Google for $1mm (a company he was conveniently personally invested in) thereby lining himself up for massive personal gains at the expense of the University?
[+] halflings|8 years ago|reply
Right, that's why Google is still paying Stanford for the license, and gave the university shares that were worth $360M in 2005 already? [0]

"In 2012, Google paid Stanford $80,000 for the license, a sharp decline from the $400,000 paid in 201a and only 1/10 of what Google paid in 2010. Since Google began disclosing these payments, the company has paid Stanford around $3 million in licensing fees. Of course, that’s in addition to the $1.8 million shares that Google issued to Stanford, and which the school sold for $336 million in 2005.Google made up some of the difference by donating $3.4 million to Stanford for scholarships and what the proxy describes as “other philanthropic endeavors”, compared with $3 million in 2011."

[0] https://www.footnoted.com/new-details-in-googles-proxy-on-st...

[+] godelmachine|8 years ago|reply
Is he not the author of the famous book - Computer Architecture : A Quantitative Approach by Hennessy Patterson?
[+] bby|8 years ago|reply

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