Daniel "Dan" William Dobberpuhl (March 25, 1945 – October 26, 2019) was an

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

who led several teams of

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...

designers.

Background

Dobberpuhl was born in

Streator, Illinois Streator is a city in LaSalle and Livingston counties in the U.S. state of Illinois. The city is situated on the Vermilion River approximately southwest of Chicago in the prairie and farm land of north-central Illinois. As of the 2020 censu ...

on March 25, 1945. He graduated with a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

degree in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

from the

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Universit ...

in 1967. He worked as an engineer for the

Department of Defense Department of Defence or Department of Defense may refer to: Current departments of defence * Department of Defence (Australia) * Department of National Defence (Canada) * Department of Defence (Ireland) * Department of National Defense (Philippin ...

until 1973 when he worked for GE Integrated Circuits Laboratory in

Syracuse, New York Syracuse ( ) is a City (New York), city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, Onondaga County, New York, United States. It is the fifth-most populous city in the state of New York following New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffa ...

, making

application-specific integrated circuit An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC ) is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-efficie ...

DEC

In 1976 Dobberpuhl joined

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president unt ...

(DEC) in

Hudson, Massachusetts Hudson is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, with a total population of 20,092 as of the 2020 census. Before its incorporation as a town in 1866, Hudson was a neighborhood and unincorporated village of Marlborough, Massa ...

as a semiconductor engineer and led teams designing microprocessors such as the

DEC T-11 The T-11, also known as DC310 or DCT11, is a microprocessor that implements the PDP-11 instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Digital Equipment Corporation. The T-11 was code-named "Tiny". It was developed for embedded systems and was th ...

and

MicroVAX The MicroVAX is a discontinued family of low-cost minicomputers developed and manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). The first model, the MicroVAX I, was introduced in 1983.(announced October 1983) They used processors that implemen ...

. He rose to become one of five senior corporate consulting engineers, DEC's highest technical positions. As such, he led the teams designing the first three generations of the

DEC Alpha Alpha (original name Alpha AXP) is a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Alpha was designed to replace 32-bit VAX complex instruction set computers ...

processor and in 1985 published a textbook called "The Design and Analysis of VLSI Circuits", described as "a leading text in the field." He founded and directed the company's

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish language, Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree kno ...

Design Center in 1993 where the

StrongARM The StrongARM is a family of computer microprocessors developed by Digital Equipment Corporation and manufactured in the late 1990s which implemented the ARM v4 instruction set architecture. It was later acquired by Intel in 1997 from DEC's o ...

architecture was designed.

SiByte

Following the transfer of StrongARM to

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

, in 1998 Dobberpuhl co-founded SiByte, where as president he led the design of the SB1250 64-bit MIPS

system on a chip A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memory ...

processor, intended for high-performance networking applications. In 1998

EE Times ''EE Times'' (''Electronic Engineering Times'') is an electronics industry magazine published in the United States since 1972. EE Times is currently owned by AspenCore, a division of Arrow Electronics since August 2016. Since its acquisition ...

named Dobberpuhl as one of the "40 forces to shape the future of the Semiconductor Industry". SiByte was funded by

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

, as well as large companies such as

ATI Technologies ATI Technologies Inc. (commonly called ATI) was a Canadian semiconductor industry, semiconductor technology corporation based in Markham, Ontario, Markham, Ontario, that specialized in the development of graphics processing units and chipsets. Fo ...

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...

, and

Juniper Networks Juniper Networks, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. The company develops and markets networking products, including routers, switches, network management software, network security products, ...

, closing a third round of $40 million in funding in May 2000. Shortly after the company announced their SB1250 processor in August, the company was bought by

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wirel ...

in November of that year for stock worth over $2 billion. Dobberpuhl stayed until 2003 as vice-president and general manager of the Broadcom broadband processor division. In 2003 the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

named him a recipient of the

IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits The IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits is a Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers#Technical field awards, Technical Field Award of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). It was previously calle ...

for "Pioneering design of high-speed and low-power microprocessors."

P.A. Semi

Later in 2003 he left to found

P.A. Semi P. A. Semi (originally Palo Alto Semiconductor) was an American fabless semiconductor company founded in Santa Clara, California in 2003 by Daniel W. Dobberpuhl, who was previously the lead designer for the DEC Alpha 21064 and StrongARM proces ...

, a

fabless semiconductor company Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclus ...

that designed the

PWRficient PWRficient is a microprocessor series by P.A. Semi where the PA6T-1682M was the only one that became an actual product. PWRficient processors comply with the 64-bit Power ISA, and are designed for high performance and extreme power efficiency. T ...

family of

Power ISA Power ISA is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) currently developed by the OpenPOWER Foundation, led by IBM. It was originally developed by IBM and the now-defunct Power.org industry group. Power IS ...

processors. He was elected to the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...

in 2006 for "Innovative design and implementation of high-performance, low-power microprocessors." In 2008 P.A. Semi was sold to

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

for a reported $278M USD. He received a Distinguished Alumni Award by University of Illinois in 2003, and the College Of Engineering Alumni Honor Award from the University of Illinois in May 2009.

Agnilux

Dobberpuhl retired from Apple near the end of 2009, leaving to join the startup Agnilux, who were acquired by Google shortly afterwards in April 2010. He held 15 patents. Dobberpuhl was Chairman of the Board for embedded machine vision company

Movidius Movidius is a company based in San Mateo, California, that designs specialised low-power processor Monolithic integrated circuit, chips for computer vision. The company was acquired by Intel in September 2016. Company history Movidius was co-fou ...

. He died at

Pacific Grove, California Pacific Grove is a coastal city in Monterey County, California, in the United States. The population at the 2020 census was 15,090. Pacific Grove is located between Point Pinos and Monterey. Pacific Grove has numerous Victorian-era houses, so ...

on October 26, 2019.

Works

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dobberpuhl, Daniel W. 1945 births 2019 deaths People from Streator, Illinois Grainger College of Engineering alumni American computer specialists Digital Equipment Corporation people Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering American electrical engineers Engineers from Illinois