Gerrit Blaauw

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Gerrit Blaauw

Gerrit Anne Blaauw , called Gerry, (born July 17, 1924 in The Hague ; † March 21, 2018 in Utrecht ) was a Dutch computer engineer.

Blaauw studied electrical engineering at the TU Delft with a magna cum laude degree in 1946 and then with a scholarship from IBM from 1947 at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania and then at Harvard University , where he completed his master’s degree in 1949 and with Howard Aiken an den Mark III and Mark IV computers worked. Aiken developed this proven technology for the US Navy, and they proved to be very reliable, which was reflected later in the ascribed at IBM Blaauw sentence: Established technology Tends to persist in the face of new technology (Established technology tends against new Technology to claim). In addition, he was known then and later at IBM for his methodical approach to computer design. With his work on the Mark IV he received his doctorate from Harvard in 1952. He returned to the Netherlands, where he was involved in the development of the second version of the ARRA relay computer at the Mathematical Center in Amsterdam. The first 1952 version by Carel Scholten and Bram Loopstra proved to be a failure, and the second version, with Blaauw's participation, was a completely new design. In addition to the ARRA II, there was also a version for Fokker , which was used in 1955 to design the successful Fokker Friendship aircraft.

In 1955 he went back to the USA to IBM in their development department in Poughkeepsie , where he worked with Frederick P. Brooks on various projects ( IBM 7030 Stretch , IBM 8000 series) and finally on IBM's key object in the mainframe area, System / 360 , which was announced in 1964. He was one of the leading engineers in the project alongside Brooks, Gene Amdahl . The use of 8-bit (1-byte) character sizes instead of the 6-bit that was widespread at the time went back to him and he designed the Blaauw Box , a revolutionary system of address translation for the implementation of virtual memory (with paging ). Its use was deleted from the draft of the first version, but came in version 67 and is probably its first use in a commercial mainframe computer. The System / 360 was also a pioneer in the use of time sharing and multiprogramming in the commercial field.

After his time at IBM he became a professor at the University of Twente , where he retired in 1989.

In 1994 he received the Computer Pioneer Award . Since 1998 he was a member of the National Academy of Engineering .

Fonts

  • with Frederick Brooks Computer Architecture: Concepts and Evolution , Addison-Wesley 1997

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Overlijdensbericht Prof. dr. Gerrit Anne Blaauw. mensenlinq.nl, March 24, 2018, accessed on April 19, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Amdahl, Blaauw, Brooks Architecture of the IBM System / 360 , IBM Journal of Research and Development, Volume 8, April 1964, pp. 87-101
  3. ↑ Dr. Gerrit A. Blaauw
personal data
SURNAME Blaauw, Gerrit
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Blaauw, Gerrit Anne (full name); Blaauw, Gerry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch computer scientist
DATE OF BIRTH July 17, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH The hague
DATE OF DEATH March 21, 2018
Place of death Utrecht