Mark Alan Horowitz
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Mark Alan Horowitz is an American
electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
,
computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...
, inventor, and entrepreneur who is the Yahoo! Founders Professor in the
School of Engineering Engineering education is the activity of teaching knowledge and principles to the professional development, professional practice of engineering. It includes an initial education (Diploma in Engineering, Dip.Eng.)and Bachelor of Engineering, ( ...
and the Fortinet Founders Chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering at
Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
. He holds a joint appointment in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science departments and previously served as the Chair of the Electrical Engineering department from 2008 to 2012. He is a co-founder, the former chairman, and the former chief scientist of Rambus Inc. Horowitz has authored over 700 published conference and research papers and is among the most highly-cited computer architects of all time. He is a prolific inventor and holds 374 patents as of 2023.


Education

Horowitz received bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...
in 1978. After graduating, he moved to
Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...
to work at
Signetics Signetics Corporation was an American electronics manufacturer specifically established to make integrated circuits. Founded in 1961, they went on to develop a number of early microprocessors and support chips, as well as the widely used 555 time ...
, one of the early integrated circuits companies. After working for a year, he entered Stanford, and worked on CAD tools for very-large-scale integration (VLSI) design. His research at Stanford included some of the earliest work on extracting the resistance of integrated circuit wires, and estimating the delay of MOS transistor circuits. He was advised at Stanford by Robert Dutton and graduated with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1984.


Academic career

In 1984, Horowitz joined the Stanford faculty. At Stanford his research focused on VLSI circuits and he led a number of early
RISC In electronics and computer science, a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) is a computer architecture designed to simplify the individual instructions given to the computer to accomplish tasks. Compared to the instructions given to a comp ...
processor designs, including
MIPS-X MIPS-X is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) microprocessor and instruction set architecture (ISA) developed as a follow-on project to the Stanford MIPS, MIPS project at Stanford University by the same team that developed MIPS. The project ...
. His research has been in the fields of electrical engineering, computer science, and applying engineering tools to biology. He has worked on RISC processors, multiprocessor designs, low-power circuits, high-speed links, computational photography, and genomics. Horowitz and his research group at Stanford pioneered many innovations in high-speed link design, and many of today’s high speed link designs are designed by his former students or colleagues from Rambus. In the 2000s he teamed up with
Marc Levoy Marc Stewart Levoy is a computer graphics researcher and Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, a vice president and Fellow at Adobe Inc., and (until 2020) a Distinguished Engineer at Google. He ...
to work on
computational photography Computational photography refers to digital image capture and processing techniques that use digital computation instead of optical processes. Computational photography can improve the capabilities of a camera, or introduce features that were no ...
, research which explored how to use computation to create better pictures, often by using data from multiple sensors. This research also explored light-field photography, which captured enough information to allow a computer to reconstruct the view to an arbitrary viewpoint. The need to capture light-fields to process led to the creation of the Stanford Camera Array, a system which could synchronize and collect images from 100 image sensors, as well as work that eventually led to the Lytro camera, whose photographs could be refocused after they were captured. In 2006, Horowitz received the IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits "for pioneering contributions to the design of high-performance digital integrated circuits and systems". In 2007, he was elected to the
National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...
for his "leadership in high-bandwidth memory-interface technology and in scalable cache-coherent multiprocessor architectures." In 2008, he was elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...
. At the 2014
International Solid-State Circuits Conference International Solid-State Circuits Conference is a global forum for presentation of advances in solid-state circuits and Systems-on-a-Chip. The conference is held every year in February at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis in downtown San Fr ...
, he presented his studies on the outlook for the semiconductor industry in ''Computing's Energy Problem (And What We Can Do About It)''. In 2018 Horowitz founded the AHA Agile Hardware Project at Stanford University and has led it ever since. The program aims to "enable a more agile hardware development flow" by creating "an open source hardware/software tool chain to rapidly create and validate alternative hardware implementations and a new open-source system ARM/CGRA SoC which will enable rapid execution/emulation of the resulting design." The project is funded by Intel's Science and Technology Center,
DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adva ...
, the
National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...
,
Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Amazon that provides Software as a service, on-demand cloud computing computing platform, platforms and Application programming interface, APIs to individuals, companies, and gover ...
,
Meta Platforms Meta Platforms, Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Meta owns and operates several prominent social media platforms and communication services, including Facebook, Instagram, Threads ...
Inc.,
Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...
,
Advanced Micro Devices Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a Information technology, hardware and F ...
,
Nvidia Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curti ...
,
Qualcomm Qualcomm Incorporated () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software and services related to wireless techn ...
, and
Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
. He also helps lead Stanford's Quantum Fundamentals, ARchitectures and Machines initiative (Q-FARM) which aims to harness the expertise and facilities of Stanford University and the
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in Menlo Park, California, Menlo Park, Ca ...
to accelerate the development of quantum information science.


Business

In 1990 Horowitz took a leave of absence from Stanford to work with Mike Farmwald on a new high-bandwidth
DRAM Dram, DRAM, or drams may refer to: Technology and engineering * Dram (unit), a unit of mass and volume, and an informal name for a small amount of liquor, especially whisky or whiskey * Dynamic random-access memory, a type of electronic semicondu ...
design which, in April of that year, led to the formation of Rambus Inc., a company specializing in high-bandwidth memory technology. After working at Rambus for a year, he returned to Stanford and started a research program in high-speed
input/output In computing, input/output (I/O, i/o, or informally io or IO) is the communication between an information processing system, such as a computer, and the outside world, such as another computer system, peripherals, or a human operator. Inputs a ...
. Video game machines were early adopters of this technology, with
Nintendo 64 The (N64) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on June 23, 1996, in North America on September 29, 1996, and in Europe and Australia on March 1, 1997. As the successor to the Super Nintendo E ...
and
PlayStation 2 The PlayStation 2 (PS2) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on 4 March 2000, in North America on 26 October, in Europe on 24 Novembe ...
the first two mass-produced products to use the company's DRAMs.
Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...
later adopted the company's
RDRAM Rambus DRAM (RDRAM), and its successors Concurrent Rambus DRAM (CRDRAM) and Direct Rambus DRAM (DRDRAM), are types of synchronous dynamic random-access memory (SDRAM) developed by Rambus from the 1990s through to the early 2000s. The third-generati ...
processor interface, and Rambus memory chips were used in PCs in the late 1990s. Horowitz returned briefly to Rambus in 2005 to help start a research organization at the company and left the board of directors in 2011.


Awards and honors

* IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits (2006) * Member,
National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...
(inducted 2007) * Fellow,
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...
(elected 2008) * SIA University Research Award (2011) * Fellow,
IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...
* Fellow,
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 ...
* Best Paper Award, ISQED (2005) * Jack Kilby Outstanding Paper Award, ISSCC (2003) * Most influential paper, International Symposium on Computer Architecture (1994) * Most Influential Paper, International Symposium on Computer Architecture (1989) * ChipEx Global Leadership Award (2015) * ACM -
IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...
CS
Eckert–Mauchly Award The Eckert–Mauchly Award recognizes contributions to digital systems and computer architecture. It is known as the computer architecture community’s most prestigious award. First awarded in 1979, it was named for John Presper Eckert and Joh ...
(2022)


Publications


Books

* J. Acken, A. Agarwal, G. Gulak, M. Horowitz, S. McFarling, S. Richardson, A. Salz, R. Simoni, D. Stark, and S. Tjiang, ''The MIPS-X RISC Microprocessor''. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, MA, 1989. Foreword by J.L. Hennessy. * S. Bell, J. Pu, J. Hagerty, M. Horowitz, ''Compiling Algorithms for Heterogeneous Systems'', Morgan & Claypool Publishers, 2018.


Book chapters

* ''Multithreaded Computer Architectures'', chapter 8 – "Architectural and Implementation Tradeoffs in the Design of Multiple-Context Processors", Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994. * ''Design of High-Performance Microprocessor Circuits'', "High-Speed Electrical Signaling", 2001. * ''Power Aware Design Methodologies'', chapter 8 – "Energy-Efficient Design of High-Speed Links", Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002. * ''Computational Imaging and Vision'', Chapter 7 – "Synthetic Aperture Focusing using Dense Camera Arrays", Volume 35, 2007, pp. 159–172. * ''Methods in Enzymology'', Chapter 13 – "Alignment of Cryo-Electron Tomography Datasets", Elsevier, 2010, pp. 343–367.


Select Patents

* Gary B. Bronner, Brent S. Haukness, Mark A. Horowitz, Mark D. Kellam, Fariborz Assaderaghi. "United States Patent 11,244,727 Dynamic memory rank configuration", Rambus Inc, Feb 8, 2022 * Vladimir M Stojanovic, Andrew C Ho, Anthony Bessios, Bruno W Garlepp, Grace Tsang, Mark A Horowitz, Jared L Zerbe, Jason C Wei. "United States Patent 16/999,853 Partial response receiver", Rambus Inc, Mar 11, 2021 * Craig Hampel, Mark Horowitz. "United States Patent 17/000,130 System including hierarchical memory modules having different types of integrated circuit memory devices", Rambus Inc, Feb 4, 2021 * Mark Alan Horowitz, Ilias Pappas, Edward Buckley, William Thomas Blank. "United States Patent 10,861,380 Display systems with hybrid emitter circuits", Facebook Technologies LLC, Dec 8, 2020 * Haw-Jyh Liaw, Xingchao Yuan, Mark A Horowitz. "United States Patent 10,782,344 Technique for determining performance characteristics of electronic devices and systems", Rambus Inc, Sep 22, 2020 * Vladimir M Stojanovic, Andrew C Ho, Anthony Bessios, Fred F Chen, Elad Alon, Mark A Horowitz. "United States Patent 10,771,295 High speed signaling system with adaptive transmit pre-emphasis", Rambus Inc, Sep 8, 2020 * Vladimir M Stojanovic, Andrew C Ho, Anthony Bessios, Bruno W Garlepp, Grace Tsang, Mark A Horowitz, Jared L Zerbe, Jason C Wei. "United States Patent 10,764,094 Partial response receiver", Rambus Inc, Sep 1, 2020 * Craig Hampel, Mark Horowitz. "United States Patent 10,755,794 System including hierarchical memory modules having different types of integrated circuit memory devices", Rambus Inc, Aug 25, 2020 * Ely K Tsern, Mark A Horowitz, Frederick A Ware. "United States Patent 16/805,619 Memory Controller With Error Detection And Retry Modes Of Operation", Rambus Inc, Aug 20, 2020 * Ely K Tsern, Mark A Horowitz, Frederick A Ware. "United States Patent 10,621,023 Memory controller with error detection and retry modes of operation", Rambus Inc, Apr 14, 2020 * Vladimir M Stojanovic, Andrew C Ho, Anthony Bessios, Fred F Chen, Elad Alon, Mark A Horowitz. "United States Patent 10,411,923 High speed signaling system with adaptive transmit pre-emphasis", Rambus Inc, Sep 10, 2019 * Mark A Horowitz, Craig E Hampel, Alfredo Moncayo, Kevin S Donnelly, Jared L Zerbe. "United States Patent 10,366,045 Flash controller to provide a value that represents a parameter to a flash memory Inventors", Rambus Inc, Jul 30, 2019 * Noy Cohen, Marc S Levoy, Michael J Broxton, Logan Grosenick, Samuel Yang, Aaron Andalman, Karl A Disseroth, Mark A Horowitz. "United States Patent 10,317,597 Light-field microscopy with phase masking", Leland Stanford Junior University, Jun 11, 2019 * Jared LeVan Zerbe, Kevin S Donnelly, Stefanos Sidiropoulos, Donald C Stark, Mark A Horowitz, Leung Yu, Roxanne Vu, Jun Kim, Bruno W Garlepp, Tsyr-Chyang Ho, Benedict Chung-Kwong Lau. "United States Patent 10,310,999 Flash memory controller with calibrated data communication", Rambus Inc, Jun 4, 2019 * Jared L Zerbe, Bruno W Garlepp, Pak S Chau, Kevin S Donnelly, Mark A Horowitz, Stefanos Sidiropoulos, Billy W Garrett Jr, Carl W Werner. "United States Patent 9,998,305 Multi-PAM output driver with distortion compensation", Rambus Inc, Jun 12, 2018 * Haw-Jyh Liaw, Xingchao Yuan, Mark A Horowitz. "United States Patent 9,977,076 Technique for determining performance characteristics of electronic devices and systems", Rambus Inc, May 22, 2018 * Vladimir M Stojanovic, Andrew C Ho, Anthony Bessios, Bruno W Garlepp, Grace Tsang, Mark A Horowitz, Jared L Zerbe, Jason C Wei. "United States Patent 9,917,708 Partial response receiver", Rambus Inc, Mar 6, 2018


References


External links


Personal homepage
Stanford University website
Google Scholar page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Horowitz, Mark Electrical engineering academics Living people Stanford University School of Engineering faculty Stanford University Department of Electrical Engineering faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering MIT School of Engineering alumni Stanford University School of Engineering alumni American technology company founders 1957 births