Gurindar “Guri” Sohi
Vilas Research Professor, John P. Morgridge Professor, and E. David Cronon Professor of Computer Sciences
Guri Sohi has touched the lives of tens of millions of Americans, though almost none of them have heard of him — or his technology. Sohi is an expert in the design of high-performance computer systems, and he and his lab invented a circuit that helps computers to run multiple instructions at once. That circuit (known as “752 Patent”) found its way into Intel processors and then into the inner workings of iPhones and iPads. Both Intel and Apple challenged Sohi’s patent, but so far, Sohi has prevailed — with Intel agreeing to an undisclosed settlement in 2009 and Apple hit with a $234 million ruling in 2015. Currently, Sohi teaches Introduction to Computer Programming (Computer Science 252) and Advanced Computer Architecture (Computer Science 752).
My assigned reading includes:
For anybody interested in computer hardware design, I ask them to try to read a book that has been out of print for many years: The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder. Some of my former students actually ended up meeting some of the characters in the book!
At the moment I’m reading:
Grape, Olive, Pig: Deep Travels through Spain’s Food Culture, by Matt Goulding; and Cathedral of the Sea, by Ildefonso Falcones.
For work and research, I read:
Proceedings of conferences, rather than journals, are where the latest research papers are published in computer science, so that is what I get.
Publications that I subscribe to:
The Economist and Fortune. Just about every day, I start at news.google.com and then follow the links to a variety of other news websites. I frequently read articles on the websites of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, and the Atlantic.
I keep meaning to getting around to reading:
The Bible. Have been meaning to do so for more than 35 years. Perhaps after I retire!
I like to reread:
There are several books by Tom Clancy that I have read multiple times. While I don’t discover new things, they are always exciting to read.
