David James Brown is an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (a ...

. He was one of a small group that helped to develop the system at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...

that later resulted in

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, th ...

, and later was a co-founder of

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...

in 1982.

Education

Brown received his primary and secondary school education in

Delmar, New York Delmar is a hamlet in the Town of Bethlehem, in Albany County, New York, United States. It is a suburb of the neighboring city of Albany. The community is bisected by NY Route 443 (Delaware Avenue), a major thoroughfare, main street, and route ...

, and then studied at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...

Moore School of Electrical Engineering The Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania came into existence as a result of an endowment from Alfred Fitler Moore on June 4, 1923. It was granted to Penn's School of Electrical Engineering, located in the Towne ...

where he received a B.S.E. degree in 1979 and an M.S.E. under advisor Ruzena Bajcsy in 1980. In 1984, Brown was introduced to David Wheeler, who invited him to join the

University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory The Department of Computer Science and Technology, formerly the Computer Laboratory, is the computer science department of the University of Cambridge. it employed 35 academic staff, 25 support staff, 35 affiliated research staff, and about 1 ...

as a doctoral candidate. In October 1986, he matriculated at St John's College,

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

, England to pursue a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

degree. His dissertation introduced the concept of

Unified Memory Architecture Unified may refer to: * The Unified, a wine symposium held in Sacramento, California, USA * ''Unified'', the official student newspaper of Canterbury Christ Church University * UNFD, an Australian record label * ''Unified'' (Sweet & Lynch album), ...

.David J. Brown
Abstraction of Image and Pixel. The Thistle Display System
Technical Report No. 229, at

, UK, August 1991. This idea has subsequently been widely applied — such as by

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

in their processors and platform architecture of the late 1990s and onward.

Career

Brown became a member of the research staff in the Computer Science Department at

in 1981, where he helped develop the research edition of the

SUN workstation The SUN workstation was a modular computer system designed at Stanford University in the early 1980s. It became the seed technology for many commercial products, including the original workstations from Sun Microsystems. History In 1979 Xerox do ...

with

Andreas Bechtolsheim Andreas Maria Maximilian Freiherr von Mauchenheim genannt Bechtolsheim (born 30 September 1955) is a German electrical engineer, entrepreneur and investor. He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and was its chief hardware designer. His net worth ...

, prior to the establishment of

.Charlene O'Hanlon
A Conversation with David Brown: The Nondisruptive Theory of Evolution
''

ACM Queue ''ACM Queue'' is a bimonthly computer magazine founded and published by the Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 an ...

'', October 10, 2006, . In 1982, Brown was one of the group of the seven technical staff from Stanford (along with

Kurt Akeley Kurt Akeley (born June 8, 1958) is an American computer graphics engineer. Akeley was elected into the National Academy of Engineering in 2005 for contributions to the architecture of 3-D graphics systems and the definition of Open GL, now the in ...

, Tom Davis, Rocky Rhodes, Mark Hannah, Mark Grossman, and Charles "Herb" Kuta) who joined

Jim Clark James Clark Jr. OBE (4 March 1936 – 7 April 1968) was a British Formula One racing driver from Scotland, who won two World Championships, in 1963 and 1965. A versatile driver, he competed in sports cars, touring cars and in the Indiana ...

to form

. Brown and Stephen R. Bourne formed the Workstation Systems Engineering group at

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...

. Together they built the group responsible for the introduction of the

DECstation The DECstation was a brand of computers used by DEC, and refers to three distinct lines of computer systems—the first released in 1978 as a word processing system, and the latter (more widely known) two both released in 1989. These compri ...

line of computer systems. In 1992, Brown joined

. He helped to establish the process used for the company's system software architecture, and then went on to define the application binary interface for Solaris, Sun's principal system software product. Later, Brown worked on Solaris's adoption of

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open ...

and practices, and then its technologies for energy-efficient computing. In 1998, Brown was elected to the Council of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

, and in 2003 became a founding editor of the ''

'' magazine, producing several articles through 2010.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brown, David J. 1957 births Living people University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge American computer scientists Members of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory Silicon Graphics people Digital Equipment Corporation people Sun Microsystems people Solaris people American magazine editors