Gordon Bell

 Gordon Bell has passed away.

Gordon was one of the most important computer architects of all time. He designed, co-designed or was executive lead in charge of most of Digital Equipment Corporation's key machines in its heyday, from the initial PDP-1 to the VAX-11, in two stints working for the company. Although he wrote the seminal description of the PDP-11, perhaps the most influential minicomputer of all time, I don't think he had much to do with that design or with the PDP-10, and by the time of the Alpha he had already left DEC for good. But still, much of the company's design sensibilities grew from him.

I learned a great deal from the book he coauthored on computer engineering, using all of the DEC machines as examples. Most of the chapters were coauthored by Gordon and other members of the various technical teams. (Wow, I paid ten bucks for my copy at a DECUS in 1986, but even the Kindle version now goes for a hundred bucks?!?)

He also established the Gordon Bell Prize for accomplishments in parallel computing. One of the recent prizes was for simulation of quantum mechanics, though nothing to do with quantum computing.

RIP Gordon, thanks for the machines and for being such an important advocate of parallel computing.