Wikipedia

Sophie Wilson

Not to be confused withSophia Wilson.

Sophie Mary Wilson(bornRoger Wilson;June 1957) is an Englishcomputer scientist,a co-designer of theinstruction setfor theARM architecture.[5][6][7]

Sophie Wilson
CBEFRSFREngDistFBCS
Wilson in 2013
BornJune 1957 (age 67)[1][3]
Leeds,England[3]
Education
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
Institutions
Website

Wilson first designed a microcomputer during a break from studies atSelwyn College, Cambridge.She subsequently joinedAcorn Computersand was instrumental in designing the BBC Microcomputer, including theBBC BASICprogramming language.[8]She first began designing the ARMreduced instruction set computer(RISC) in 1983, which entered production two years later. It became popular inembedded systemsand is now the most widely used processor architecture insmartphones.In 2011, she was listed inMaximum PCas number 8 in an article titled "The 15 Most Important Women in Tech History".[9]She was made aCommander of the Order of the British Empirein 2019.

Early life and education

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Wilson was born inLeedsto schoolteacher parents, her father specialising in English and her mother physics.[3]She spent her childhood in the village ofBurn Bridge,North Yorkshire.After secondary schooling atHarrogate Grammar School,[10]in 1976 Wilson went up toSelwyn College, Cambridge,[11]where she studiedmathematicsfor her first two years, switching tocomputer sciencein her final year.[4]She was a member of the university Microprocessor society.[12]

Career

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Before going to university, Wilson had designed and built two electronic systems forICIFibres Research inHarrogatenear her home village. The following year, in the 1977 summer vacation after her first year at university, she designed a small system around aMOS Technology 6502microprocessor, which was used to electronically control feed for cows.[13]

Wilson's success with the cow-feeder project and paper designs for a more general system based on it caught the notice ofHermann Hauser,at the time a Cambridge postgraduate student. Hauser was impressed, and supported Wilson to stay in Cambridge for the 1978 summer vacation to see if she could turn the design into reality. At the same time a small microcomputer kit, theMK14,was just being launched byScience of Cambridge,led byChris Curryon behalf of Cambridge electronics businessmanClive Sinclair.Wilson was convinced she could do better, and Hauser encouraged her to do so, using parts from the MK14.[14]

In December 1978 Hauser and Curry set up Cambridge Processor Unit Ltd (CPU), initially as a consultancy designing microprocessor-based control systems. Their first customer was Ace Coin Equipment Ltd, who needed controllers for theirfruit machines,with Wilson designing a device to prevent cigarette lighter sparks triggering payouts.[13]Meanwhile Wilson's computer design, combined with a cassette interface designed bySteve Furber,became theAcorn Micro-Computer,the first of a long line of computers sold by the company.[15][14]Wilson started at the company in 1979.[10]

Based on this processor board CPU Ltd developed an increasing number of different interface, display, control, and test add-ons for different customers, which in turn led to theAcorn Eurocard rack systemsthat were made generally available, and then theAcorn Atomreleased in March 1980. Wilson, initiallymoonlightingfrom the final year of her degree, contributed first themachine code monitor,then anassembler,then a version ofBASICand multipledevice driversfor the machines ( "an incredible task ofbootstrappingthings up "), as well as pitching in with everything else in the office.[3]

BBC micro

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Wilson was at the forefront of creating the prototype that enabled Acorn to win the contract with theBritish Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)for their ambitious computer education project.[16]

The BBC had planned that the centrepiece of their project would be anupcoming tv seriesthat would relate the possibilities that computers were opening up to demonstrations shown running on a standard reference microcomputer, that viewers would then be able to experiment with themselves. However by the end of 1980 it had become clear that the BBC's intended machine, the government-backedNewbury Newbrain,would not be able to meet either the capability or the timetable the BBC sought, and the programme team began an urgent search for other options. Curry pressed the already existing Acorn Atom, but when this was rejected at the start of February 1981 as being too limited and too non-standard, Curry instead offered for the BBC to come to Cambridge the following week to view a prototype of Acorn's next computer — a machine that in reality did not as yet exist, beyond some general design discussion and a name, the Acorn Proton. Hauser employed a deception, telling both Wilson and colleague Steve Furber that the other had agreed a prototype could be built within a week.[17][18]Taking up the challenge, the Acorn team designed the system including the circuit board and components from Monday to Wednesday, which required fast newDRAMintegrated circuitsto be sourced directly fromHitachi.By Thursday evening, a prototype had been built, but it was only on Friday morning that it was actually working, allowing Wilson (who had managed to catch a few hours sleep in the night) to start porting over an operating system,[17]in time to be able to show it consistently drawing a line to a high-res graphics screen by the time the BBC arrived, with full text and graphics on screen by the time the BBC returned from an unproductive visit to the nearbySinclair Research.

The Proton was accepted to become theBBC Micro,[19]with it falling to Wilson to develop its operating system and its version of BASIC,BBC BASIC[8]— at 16K and 16K respectively a fourfold increase on the 4K and 4K of the Atom, including a full set offloating pointmathematical routines. Wilson's "Acorn SuperBASIC" development had reached about 10K by the time of the BBC's visit, and she was keen to preserve the improvements she considered she had made withAcorn System BASICover previous versions of the language.[20]But the BBC, in particular their external consultantJohn Colland BBC Engineering'sRichard Russell,were adamant that the core established features of the language needed to be present with recognisably standard syntax. On the other hand extensions that Wilson had written to allow morestructured programmingin BASIC chimed closely with the BBC team's ambitions, andlong fully-significant variable names,repeat/until loops,and multi-lineproceduresandfunctionswith variables that could bedeclared localall became hallmarks of BBC BASIC. Work on the system design, operating system, and BASIC language (and fitting everything into the memory available) continued through the summer, and Wilson recalled watching thewedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencerin July 1981 on a small portable television while attempting to debug and re-solder the prototype.[17]Along with Furber, Wilson was present backstage at the machine's first studio recordings for television, in case any software fixes were required. She later described the event as "a unique moment in time when the public wanted to know how this stuff works and could be shown and taught how to program."[17]

ARM processor

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In October 1983, Wilson began designing the instruction set for one of the firstreduced instruction set computer(RISC) processors, theAcorn RISC Machine(ARM).[21]The ARM1 was delivered on 26 April 1985 and worked first time,[22]entering into production the same year.[10]This processor type was later to become one of the most successfulIP cores– a licensedCPUcore – and by 2012 was being used in 95% ofsmartphones.[13]Wilson also designed Acorn Replay, the video architecture for Acorn machines. This included operating system extensions for video access, as well as thecodecs,optimised to run high frame rate video on ARM CPUs from the ARM 2 onwards.[23]

She was a non-executive director of the technology and games company Eidos plc, which bought and createdEidos Interactive,for the years following itsflotationin 1990.[24]She was a consultant toARM Ltdwhen it was split off from Acorn in 1990.

Wilson giving a public presentation onARMdevelopment in 2009

Since the demise of Acorn Computers, Wilson has made a small number of public appearances to talk about work done there.[25]

Firepath

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Wilson was the Chief Architect ofBroadcom'sFirepath processor.[26]Firepath has its history in Acorn Computers,[27]which, after being renamed toElement 14,was broken up in an acquisition, with the Element 14 name being transferred to a new company,[28]this company eventually being bought by Broadcom in 2000.[29]In 2001 she became a research fellow and director at Broadcom.[30]

Wilson was listed in 2011 inMaximum PCas number 8 in an article titled "The 15 Most Important Women in Tech History".[9]

Honours and awards

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Wilson was awarded the Fellow Award by theComputer History Museumin California in 2012 "for her work, with Steve Furber, on the BBC Micro computer and the ARM processor architecture."[1][31]In 2009, she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and, in 2013, as a Fellow of theRoyal Society.[32]Wilson received the 2014 Lovie Lifetime Achievement Award in acknowledgement for her invention of the ARM processor.[33]In 2016, she became an honorary fellow of her alma mater,Selwyn College, Cambridge.[11]In 2020, she was honoured as aDistinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society.[2]

Wilson was appointedCommander of the Order of the British Empire(CBE) in the2019 Birthday Honoursfor services to computing.[34]

In 2022 theCharles Stark Draper Prizefor Engineering was awarded in Washington D.C. to David A. Patterson, John L. Hennessy, Stephen B. Furber, and Sophie M. Wilson for their "invention, development, and implementation" of the RISC chips.[35]

Personal life

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Wilson underwentgender reassignment surgeryand transitioned from male to female in 1994.[36][37]She enjoys photography and is involved in a local theatre group, where she is in charge of costumes and set pieces and has acted in a number of productions. She has also played acameo roleas a pub landlady in theBBCtelevision dramaMicro Men,in which a younger Wilson is played by Stefan Butler.[37]

See also

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References

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  1. ^abc"Sophie Wilson: 2012 Fellow".Computer History Museum.Archivedfrom the original on 19 September 2020.Retrieved15 May2020.
  2. ^ab"Sophie Wilson".BCS.2020.Archivedfrom the original on 7 May 2021.Retrieved7 May2021.
  3. ^abcd"Oral History of Sophie Wilson 2012 Computer History Museum Fellow"(PDF).Archive.computerhistory.org.Archived(PDF)from the original on 3 March 2016.Retrieved10 April2018.
  4. ^ab"Sophie [email protected]".Archived fromthe originalon 4 December 2009.Retrieved1 January2010.
  5. ^"Award of Draper Prize".Broadcom.Retrieved11 December2023.
  6. ^"Sophie Wilson (Profile)".Computer History Museum.Retrieved11 December2023.
  7. ^"Sophie Wilson: ARM And How Making Things Simpler Made Them Faster & More Efficient".Hackaday.8 May 2018.Retrieved11 December2023.
  8. ^ab"ARM's way".Electronics Weekly.29 April 1998.Retrieved13 December2023.
  9. ^abBouman, Amber (1 March 2011)."The 15 Most Important Women in Tech History".Maximum PC.Archived fromthe originalon 2 May 2015.Retrieved12 March2012.
  10. ^abcWilson, Sophie(Summer 2024). "The AI PC era begins".Selwyn Magazine.No. Summer 2024. p. 11.
  11. ^ab"Recognition for Computer Pioneer".Selwyn College.21 April 2016.Archivedfrom the original on 2 November 2019.Retrieved15 May2020.
  12. ^Wilson, Sophie (9 May 2015)."ARM inventor: Sophie Wilson (Part 1)".YouTube.Archivedfrom the original on 11 December 2021.
  13. ^abcBidmead, Chris (2 May 2012)."Unsung Heroes of Tech: ARM creators Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber".The Register.Archivedfrom the original on 13 April 2019.Retrieved9 November2015.
  14. ^abGelenbe 2009,p. 118.
  15. ^Russell, R. T."A History of BBC BASIC".Archivedfrom the original on 23 October 2018.Retrieved10 June2007.
  16. ^Gelenbe 2009,p. 119.
  17. ^abcd"BBC Micro ignites memories of revolution".BBC News. 21 March 2008.Archivedfrom the original on 7 April 2008.Retrieved26 October2015.
  18. ^A week to remember: race to the BBC Micro prototype,The National Museum of Computing,14 January 2022. viaYouTube.
  19. ^Meeting agenda,12 February 1981. Agenda for the meeting at which the decision was taken. Made available byRichard Russell,2016.
  20. ^BBC outline specification for tendersandAcorn initial response,December 1980/January 1981. Made available byRichard Russell,2016. Accessed 2024-02-06. See alsodiscussion thread
  21. ^Gelenbe 2009,p. 121.
  22. ^Hohl & Hinds 2014,pp. 5–6.
  23. ^Drage, Chris (July 1992)."Action Replay".Acorn User.pp.107–109.Retrieved29 October2021.
  24. ^Burley, Ian (August 1993)."The cutting edge".Acorn User.pp.29–31.Retrieved29 October2021.
  25. ^"CU Computer Preservation Society 1998–1999".Cambridge University Computer Preservation Society. 29 August 2002.Archivedfrom the original on 31 March 2012.Retrieved28 June2011.On 20th October 1998, Sophie Wilson spoke to an audience of 22 aboutAcorn from the BBC to the ARM.
  26. ^Smotherman, Mark."Which Machines Do Computer Architects Admire?".Archivedfrom the original on 4 April 2006.Retrieved22 May2012.
  27. ^"League of Women Coders".Cornell University Library.Archived fromthe originalon 28 November 2022.
  28. ^"Acorn Group PLC – Preliminary Announcement of Audited Results for the Year Ended 31 December 1998"(PDF).marutan.net.Archived fromthe original(PDF)on 18 July 2011.Retrieved14 January2011.
  29. ^Cullen, Drew (14 October 2000)."Broadcom eats Element 14".The Register.Archivedfrom the original on 12 November 2020.Retrieved31 January2021.
  30. ^Wilson, Sophie(Summer 2024). "The AI PC era begins".Selwyn Magazine.No. Summer 2024. p. 11.
  31. ^Williams, Alun (20 January 2012)."Four ARM cores for every person on earth – Furber, Wilson honoured".Electronics Weekly.Archivedfrom the original on 23 January 2012.Retrieved7 March2012.
  32. ^"Ms Sophie Wilson FREng FRS".Royal Society. Archived fromthe originalon 22 February 2014.
  33. ^"Sophie Wilson's ARM Microprocessor"(in Italian). 5 May 2015.Archivedfrom the original on 4 September 2020.Retrieved12 March2019.
  34. ^"No. 62666".The London Gazette(Supplement). 8 June 2019. p. B10.
  35. ^"Draper Prize".National Academy of Engineering.Retrieved11 December2023.
  36. ^"You are beautiful and don't you forget it. A word about acceptance".Beyond Positive.9 May 2012.Archivedfrom the original on 10 August 2020.Retrieved27 April2020.
  37. ^abWilliams, Chris (8 October 2009)."BBC4's Micro Men: an interview and review".Drobe.Archived fromthe originalon 16 March 2012.Retrieved20 June2010.

Sources

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  • Hohl, William; Hinds, Christopher (2014).ARM Assembly Language: Fundamentals and Techniques, Second Edition.CRC Press.ISBN978-1-482-22985-1.
  • Gelenbe, Erol (2009).Fundamental Concepts in Computer Science.Imperial College Press.ISBN978-1-848-16291-4.
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