Robert Tomasulo

Robert Marco Tomasulo (October 31, 1934 to April 3, 2008) was an American computer scientist and the inventor of the Tomasulo algorithm, which enabled out of order execution processors to be implemented. He attended Regis High School in New York City, graduated from Manhattan College, and earned an engineering degree from Syracuse University. He joined IBM research in 1956 and, after nearly a decade in technical and leadership roles, moved into mainframe development, including work on the IBM System/360 Model 91 and its successors. After a 25 year career with IBM he worked on an incubator project at Storage Technology Corporation to develop the first CMOS-based mainframe system, co-founded NetFrame, an early microprocessor-based server company, and consulted on processor architecture and microarchitecture for Amdahl Consulting. He received the Eckert-Mauchly Award in 1997 for the Tomasulo algorithm.