William Michael Johnson is a technologist, and pioneer in

superscalar A superscalar processor (or multiple-issue processor) is a CPU that implements a form of parallelism called instruction-level parallelism within a single processor. In contrast to a scalar processor, which can execute at most one single in ...

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...

design in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. Johnson holds bachelor's and master's degrees in

electrical engineering 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 ...

, both from

Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public university, public research university in Tempe, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 as Territorial Normal School by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, the university is o ...

. Johnson was an architect and designer of early

reduced instruction set computing 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 com ...

(RISC) processors at

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

known as ROMP, in

Austin, Texas Austin ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Texas. It is the county seat and most populous city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and W ...

. Johnson joined

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 ...

(AMD) in 1985 as the chief architect of the

AMD Am29000 The AMD Am29000, commonly shortened to 29k, is a family of 32-bit RISC microprocessors and microcontrollers developed and fabricated by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Based on the seminal Berkeley RISC, the 29k added a number of significant impr ...

family (commonly known as "29K") of microprocessors. He graduated with a Ph.D. in

from

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 ...

in 1989, working with Professor Mark Horowitz. He held various management and leadership positions on the AMD K5 and K7 processor teams. He was vice president of the Advanced Architecture Labs, responsible for technology development in the areas of processor, multimedia, networking, telecommunications, and personal computer system products. He was vice president of the AMD Personal Connectivity Solutions Group in 2002. By 2004 he was a senior AMD fellow. Later he headed

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog ...

' Austin Microprocessor Design Center. He helped organize a 2005 conference on revitalizing computer architecture research. He served on the electrical engineering advisory council for Arizona State. Johnson wrote a seminal book on microprocessor

superscalar architecture A superscalar processor (or multiple-issue processor) is a CPU that implements a form of parallelism called instruction-level parallelism within a single processor. In contrast to a scalar processor, which can execute at most one single instr ...

in 1991. The first book on the subject, it was an expanded version of his dissertation, and included an appendix on applying the techniques to the

Intel Corporation Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer components such as central processing ...

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

architecture. He was quoted as saying: "The x86 really isn't all that complex—it just doesn't make a lot of sense."

Selected works

* Mike Johnson, ''Superscalar Microprocessor Design'', Prentice-Hall, 1991, * Technical Report No. CSL-TR-89-383 * * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Johnson, Mike Stanford University alumni American computer scientists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering alumni