Steve Furber Explained

Steve Furber
Birth Name:Stephen Byram Furber
Birth Date:1953 3, df=yes
Birth Place:Manchester, England[1]
Education:Manchester Grammar School
Alma Mater:University of Cambridge (BA, MMath, PhD)
Thesis Title:Is the Weis-Fogh principle exploitable in turbomachines?
Thesis Url:http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.456071
Thesis Year:1979
Doctoral Advisor:John Ffowcs Williams
Notable Students:Simon Segars[2]
Website:

Stephen Byram Furber (born 21 March 1953) is a British computer scientist, mathematician and hardware engineer, and Emeritus ICL Professor of Computer Engineering in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester, UK.[3] After completing his education at the University of Cambridge (BA, MMath, PhD), he spent the 1980s at Acorn Computers, where he was a principal designer of the BBC Micro and the ARM 32-bit RISC microprocessor.[4], over 250 billion ARM chips have been manufactured, powering much of the world's mobile computing and embedded systems, everything from sensors to smartphones to servers.[5] [6] [7] [8]

In 1990, he moved to Manchester to lead research into asynchronous circuits, low-power electronics[9] and neural engineering, where the Spiking Neural Network Architecture (SpiNNaker) project is delivering a computer incorporating a million ARM processors optimised for computational neuroscience.[10] [11]

Education

Furber was educated at Manchester Grammar School[12] and represented the UK in the International Mathematical Olympiad in Hungary in 1970 winning a bronze medal. He went on to study the Mathematical Tripos as an undergraduate student of St John's College, Cambridge, receiving a Bachelor of Arts (BA) and Master of Mathematics (MMath – Part III of the Mathematical Tripos) degrees.[8] In 1978, he was appointed a Rolls-Royce research fellow in aerodynamics at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and was awarded a PhD in 1980 for research on the fluid dynamics of the Weis-Fogh mechanism[13] supervised by John Ffowcs Williams.[14] [15] During his PhD in the late 1970s, Furber worked on a voluntary basis for Hermann Hauser and Chris Curry within the fledging Acorn Computers (originally the Cambridge Processor Unit), on a number of projects; notably a microprocessor based fruit machine controller, and the Proton – the initial prototype version of what was to become the BBC Micro, in support of Acorn's tender for the BBC Computer Literacy Project.[16] [17] [18] [19] [20]

Career and research

In 1981, following the completion of his PhD and the award of the BBC contract to Acorn computers, Furber joined Acorn where he was a Hardware Designer and then Design Manager. He was involved in the final design and production of the BBC Micro and later, the Acorn Electron, and the ARM microprocessor. In August 1990 he moved to the University of Manchester to become the International Computers Limited (ICL) Professor of Computer Engineering and established the AMULET microprocessor research group.

Furber's main research interests are in neural networks, networks on chip and microprocessors. In 2003, Furber was a member of the EPSRC research cluster in biologically inspired[21] novel computation. On 16 September 2004, he gave a speech on Hardware Implementations of Large-scale Neural Networks as part of the initiation activities of the Alan Turing Institute.

Furber's most recent project SpiNNaker,[22] [23] [24] is an attempt to build a new kind of computer that directly mimics the workings of the human brain. Spinnaker is an artificial neural network realised in hardware, a massively parallel processing system eventually designed to incorporate a million ARM processors.[25] [26] The finished Spinnaker will model 1 per cent of the human brain's capability, or around 1 billion neurons. The Spinnaker project aims amongst other things to investigate:

Furber believes that "significant progress in either direction will represent a major scientific breakthrough".[27] Furber's research interests include asynchronous systems, ultra-low-power processors for sensor networks, on-chip interconnect and globally asynchronous locally synchronous (GALS),[28] and neural systems engineering.[29] [30] [31] [32]

His research has been funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC),[33] Royal Society and the European Research Council (ERC).[8]

Awards and honours

In February 1997, Furber was elected a Fellow of the British Computer Society. In 1998, he became a member of the European Working Group on Asynchronous Circuit Design (ACiD-WG). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2002[34] and was Specialist Adviser to the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee inquiry into microprocessor technology.

Furber was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2005 and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (FIET). He is a Chartered Engineer (CEng). In September 2007 he was awarded the Faraday Medal[35] and in 2010 he gave the Pinkerton Lecture.[36]

Furber was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours[37] [38] and was elected as one of the three laureates of Millennium Technology Prize in 2010 (with Richard Friend and Michael Grätzel), for development of ARM processor.[39] In 2012, Furber was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum "for his work, with Sophie Wilson, on the BBC Micro computer and the ARM processor architecture."[40] [41]

In 2004 he was awarded a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award.[34] In 2014, he was made a Distinguished Fellow at the British Computer Society (DFBCS) recognising his contribution to the IT profession and industry.[42] Furber's nomination for the Royal Society reads:

In 2009, Unsworth Academy (formerly called Castlebrook High School) in Manchester introduced a house system, with Furber being one of the four houses.[43] On 15 October 2010, Furber officially opened the Independent Learning Zone in Unsworth Academy.[44] In 2012, a building at Radbroke Hall was named in his honour by Barclays Bank.[45]

In 2022, he was awarded the Charles Stark Draper Prize by the National Academy of Engineering of the United States of America alongside John L. Hennessy, David A. Patterson and Sophie M. Wilson for contributions to the invention, development, and implementation of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) chips.[46] [47] Furber was played by actor Sam Philips in the BBC Four documentary drama Micro Men, first aired on 8 October 2009.

Personal life

Furber is married to Valerie Elliot with two daughters, 3 grandchildren and plays bass guitar.[12]

Notes and References

  1. Web site: A Conversation with Steve Furber . . Queue . 1 February 2010 . 7 March 2012 . Brown, David.
  2. MSc. Simon Anthony. Segars . Low power microprocessor design. University of Manchester . 1996. . 643624237.
  3. Web site: Prof Steve Furber CBE FRS FREng FBCS FIET CITP CEng – The University of Manchester. research.manchester.ac.uk.
  4. Web site: Steve Furber: developing ARM with no people and no money . Lean . Thomas . 22 October 2012 . British Library . 6 May 2014 . 10 November 2016 . https://web.archive.org/web/20161110002139/http://www.bl.uk/voices-of-science/interviewees/steve-furber/audio/steve-furber-developing-arm-with-no-people-and-no-money . dead .
  5. Web site: arm.com. Arm is Everywhere Technology Matters: 250+ Billion Chips in Everything from Sensors to Smartphones to Servers. Anon. 2023.
  6. Web site: Inside the numbers: 100 billion ARM-based chips. 27 February 2017 .
  7. Web site: Enabling Mass IoT connectivity as Arm partners ship 100 billion chips. 27 February 2017 .
  8. Steve Furber's
  9. Book: Furber, Stephen B. . VLSI RISC architecture and organization . M. Dekker . New York . 1989 . 0-8247-8151-1 .
  10. 10.1109/MAHC.2014.8. Steve Furber [Interviews]. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 36. 58–68. 2014. Grier . D. A. . 28152764.
  11. http://sounds.bl.uk/related-content/TRANSCRIPTS/021T-C1379X0078XX-0000A0.pdf National Life Stories, Professor Steve Furber Interviewed by Thomas Lean
  12. Web site: Steve Furber on Cambridge, Acorn and the University of Manchester. cdyf.me. 2023. Duncan. Hull. https://web.archive.org/web/20231219171238/https://www.cdyf.me/steve. 2023-12-19. "Maths is the only sport I’ve played for my country".
  13. PhD. Is the Weis-Fogh principle exploitable in turbomachines?. 10.17863/CAM.11472. Stephen Byram. Furber. 1980. . University of Cambridge. 500446535.
  14. Furber . S. B. . Steve Furber. Williams . J. E. F. . John Ffowcs Williams. 10.1017/S0022112079001166 . Is the Weis-Fogh principle exploitable in turbomachinery? . Journal of Fluid Mechanics . 94 . 3 . 519 . 1979 . 1979JFM....94..519F. 222345512 .
  15. Fitzpatrick . J. . An interview with Steve Furber . 10.1145/1941487.1941501 . Communications of the ACM. 54 . 5 . 34–39 . 2011 . 9046599 .
  16. Web site: Acorn recollections: Steve Furber recalls.... speleotrove.com.
  17. News: The Tech Lab: Steve Furber. BBC News. 9 October 2008 .
  18. https://archive.today/20130414075134/http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.15671 Lecture by Furber on the Future of Computer Technology
  19. Web site: Steve Furber Video Interview. Anon. 2009. computinghistory.org.uk.
  20. Web site: Steve Furber Talk @ Acorn World. 2009. computinghistory.org.uk.
  21. Furber . S. . Steve Furber. Living with Failure: Lessons from Nature? . 10.1109/ETS.2006.28 . Eleventh IEEE European Test Symposium (ETS'06) . 4–0 . 2006 . 0-7695-2566-0 .
  22. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/5187596.stm BBC News – Scientists to build 'brain box'
  23. Book: Xin Jin. Furber . S. B.. Steve Furber. Woods . J. V.. 10.1109/IJCNN.2008.4634194. Efficient modelling of spiking neural networks on a scalable chip multiprocessor. 2008 IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence). 2812–2819. 2008. 978-1-4244-1820-6. 2103654 .
  24. News: SpiNNaker set to receive new 18-core SoC to help reverse engineer the human brain. . Engineering and Technology Magazine . . 15 March 2011 . 7 March 2012 . Dempsey, Paul . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20140221174940/http://eandt.theiet.org/news/2011/feb/spinnaker-gen2-SoC.cfm . 21 February 2014 .
  25. Web site: One million ARM cores to simulate brain at Manchester . 11 July 2011 . Bush . Steve . 8 July 2011 . . UK scientists aim to model 1 per cent of a human brain with up to one million ARM cores. ... ARM was approached in May 2005 to participate in SpiNNaker ... agreement extends to Manchester making enough chips for a computer with a million cores..
  26. Web site: Acorn's Steve Furber looks to ARM supercomputers: A million node supercomputer . techgineering.org . Techgineering . 8 July 2011 . 7 March 2012 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20111014185716/http://www.techgineering.org/2011/07/08/496/acorns-steve-furber-looks-to-arm-supercomputers-a-million-node-supercomputer/ . 14 October 2011 .
  27. Book: Furber . S. . Reconfigurable Computing: Architectures, Tools and Applications . Biologically-Inspired Massively-Parallel Architectures: A Reconfigurable Neural Modelling Platform . Lecture Notes in Computer Science . Steve Furber . 10.1007/978-3-642-19475-7_2 . 6578 . 2 . 2011 . ftp://ftp.cs.man.ac.uk/pub/amulet/papers/SBF_ACSD09.pdf . https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20130107233252/ftp://ftp.cs.man.ac.uk/pub/amulet/papers/SBF_ACSD09.pdf . dead . 7 January 2013 . 978-3-642-19474-0 .
  28. Plana . L. A. . Furber . S. B. . Steve Furber. Temple . S. . Khan . M. . Shi . Y. . Wu . J. . Yang . S. . 10.1109/MDT.2007.149 . A GALS Infrastructure for a Massively Parallel Multiprocessor . IEEE Design & Test of Computers . 24 . 5 . 454 . 2007 . 16758888 .
  29. Temple . S. . Furber . S. . Steve Furber. 10.1098/rsif.2006.0177 . Neural systems engineering . Journal of the Royal Society Interface . 4 . 13 . 193–206 . 2007 . 17251143. 2359843.
  30. 24910593. 2014. Sharp. T. Real-time million-synapse simulation of rat barrel cortex. Frontiers in Neuroscience. 8. 131. Petersen. R. Furber. S. 10.3389/fnins.2014.00131 . 4038760. free.
  31. 24904294. 2014. Bhattacharya. B. S.. Engineering a thalamo-cortico-thalamic circuit on SpiNNaker: A preliminary study toward modeling sleep and wakefulness. Frontiers in Neural Circuits. 8. 46. Patterson. C. Galluppi. F. Durrant. S. J.. Furber. S. 10.3389/fncir.2014.00046. 4033042. free.
  32. 24567480. 2014. Cumming. D. R.. Beyond Moore's law. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 372. 2012. 20130376. Furber. S. B.. Paul. D. J.. 10.1098/rsta.2013.0376. 3928907. 2014RSPTA.37230376C .
  33. http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/NGBOViewPerson.aspx?PersonId=5628 Grants awarded to Steve Furber by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
  34. Web site: https://web.archive.org/web/20151117113506/https://royalsociety.org/people/stephen-furber-11472/. 2015-11-17. Professor Stephen Furber CBE FREng FRS. Anon. 2002. Royal Society. London. royalsociety.org. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
  35. Web site: Stephen Furber . royalsociety.org . 7 September 2021.
  36. Web site: The Pinkerton Lecture:The relentless march of the microchip . Tv.thiet.org . https://web.archive.org/web/20110828100841/https://tv.theiet.org/technology/infopro/9982.cfm . 28 August 2011 . dead.
  37. News: Home computing pioneer honoured. 29 December 2007. BBC News.
  38. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,39291825,00.htm BBC Micro designer gets New Year's Honour
  39. Web site: Professor Stephen Furber: Creator of the ARM microprocessor . Millennium Prize . 9 June 2010 . 10 June 2010 .
  40. Web site: Steve Furber . Computer History Museum . 23 May 2013 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20130509235846/http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/hall/bios/Steve,Furber/ . 9 May 2013.
  41. News: Four ARM cores for every person on earth – Furber, Wilson honoured . Williams, Alun . . 20 January 2012 . 7 March 2012.
  42. Web site: Professor Steve Furber – BCS Distinguished Fellow. Sarah. Chatwin. 2014. University of Manchester. https://web.archive.org/web/20140314195309/http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/people/news/full-article/?articleid=726. 2014-03-14.
  43. Web site: Businessmen support school's new house system. 2021-09-19. burytimes.co.uk. 16 February 2009.
  44. Web site: Castlebrook unveils its new Independent Learning Zone. 2021-09-19. burytimes.co.uk. 14 December 2010.
  45. Web site: Professor opens restaurant named in his honour. knutsfordguardian.co.uk. 4 November 2012 .
  46. Web site: Recipients of the Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering. nae.edu. https://web.archive.org/web/20220302052500/https://www.nae.edu/55291/DraperWinners. 2022-03-02. National Academy of Engineering.
  47. Web site: Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering. nae.edu. Anon. 2022.

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