Michael J. Flynn, Chairman of Maxeler, presents a talk at UC Berkeley, sponsored by CITRIS (Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society) on Dataflow Computing, which includes a fascinating first-hand account of the history of parallel computing and an introduction to the concepts of dataflow processing.

Michael J Flynn, Senior Advisor and Maxeler Board Chairman, is a well known figure in high performance computer design with a career spanning over 50 years.

In the mid 60’s he introduced the now familiar stream outline of computer organization (SIMD, etc.). For more than 40 years this has served as the fundamental formal taxonomy of parallel computers.

In 1970 he co-authored the first detailed discussion of techniques for the simultaneous execution of multiple instructions, now called superscalar design, a now the standard approach to implementing microprocessors.

He has been at Stanford University since 1975, where he directed the Computer Architecture and Arithmetic group, setting up an ambitious program to quantitatively understand the trade-offs needed for the efficient design of microprocessors.