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Pioneer

Daniel Slotnick

Also Known As Daniel Leonid Slotnick
Computer Systems Organization

Daniel Leonid Slotnick (1931 to 1985) was an American mathematician and computer architect who was a pioneer of parallel computing. With John Cocke he published papers in 1958 that first discussed the use of parallelism in numerical calculations, and he served as chief architect of the ILLIAC IV, a massively parallel supercomputer built by the Burroughs Corporation. As principal investigator on a DARPA contract in the early 1970s his work supported ARPANET development, including the Purdy polynomial for password security. He was a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he led the Center for Advanced Computation, and was elected an IEEE Fellow in 1976.

Facts
Birth Year
1931 1
Birth Date
1931-11-12 1
Death Year
1985 1
Death Date
1985-10-25 1
Award
IEEE Fellow 1
Award
W. Wallace McDowell Award 1
Daniel Slotnick
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FAQs

What was Daniel Slotnick's role in the ILLIAC IV?

He headed the ILLIAC IV project and its parallel computing design.

Daniel Slotnick headed the ILLIAC IV project at the University of Illinois, which the University of Illinois Department of Computer Science describes as pioneering the new concept of parallel computation. The machine was built through a collaboration of the University of Illinois, DARPA and Burroughs. It was a SIMD computer, meaning single instruction, multiple data. Slotnick had earlier worked under John von Neumann at Princeton.
Connections

In Field

Source IEEE Computer Society History Committee: Computer Pioneers: Daniel L. Slotnick

Invented

ILLIAC IV, Systems
Source ILLIAC IV - Wikipedia
In the Other Atlases

Nationality

Also in Geography Atlas: the nationality of this subject.

Sources
1. Wikidata: Daniel Slotnick
Wikidata Q93159, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)View the Source
IEEE Computer Society History Committee: Computer Pioneers: Daniel L. Slotnick
IEEE Computer Society History CommitteeIn Field: Parallel Computing, Biography header
Quote, In Field: Parallel Computing, Biography header
Significant developer of the concept of the processor array
View the Source
ILLIAC IV - Wikipedia
Invented: ILLIAC IV, Lead
Quote, Invented: ILLIAC IV, Lead
The concept of building a computer using an array of processors came to Daniel Slotnick while working as a programmer on the IAS machine in 1952.
View the Source
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