John L. Hennessy risk taker

Abstract

In the 1980s, John L. Hennessy, then a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University, shook up the computer industry by taking the concepts of reduced instruction set computing (RISC) to the masses. Hennessy wrote papers, gave talks, designed chips, started companies, and even, literally, wrote the book (a textbook that's still used today). The RISC architecture, which focused on simpler, lower-cost microprocessors, was then thought to be an academic exercise with little practical use; today it plays a major role in the industry. Hennessy, now president of Stanford, is once again designing, testing, and advocating a new architecture, this time in the field of university education. He first began rethinking research at universities and recently began reimagining university education itself.