Roland Ibbett | |
|---|---|
 Roland Ibbett 2014 | |
| Born | Roland Norman Ibbett 21 June 1941 Burton upon Trent, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Awards |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer architecture |
| Institutions | |
Early Life and Work
editIbbett was born in Burton upon Trent, England, where he attended Burton Grammar School (1952-1959). From there he went on to study at the University of Manchester, graduating with a B.Sc. (Hons) in Physics in 1962. During his third year he took advantage of an option that allowed Physics students to spend most of their third year taking courses in the Electrical Engineering Department and this significantly influenced his long-term career. He had also developed an interest in astronomy, however, and took up an offer to move to the University of Hull with James Ring, newly appointed as Professor of Applied Physics. Here Ibbett worked on designing and implementing digitisation techniques in astronomical spectrophotometry [1][2][3], for which he was awarded an M.Sc. from the University of Manchester and a Ph.D. from the University of Hull.
In 1966 he returned to Manchester to join the newly formed Department of Computer Science. Here he soon became involved in a project led by Tom Kilburn to build a successor computer (eventually known as MU5 to the Atlas computer. Ibbett was a major contributor to the design and implementation of the hardware of the MU5 processor. MU5 was fully operational by the mid 1970s and Ibbett accepted an invitation to spend four months as a Visiting Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, USA. Here he became involved with the ISPS project at CMU and on returning to Manchester continued to work with colleagues[4][5] at CMU as an early user of the UK link to the ARPANET.
In 1984 he was invited by Sidney Michaelson to apply for a chair in Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh and moved to Edinburgh in 1985 where he remained until his retirement.
Research and Teaching
editIbbett's research and teaching interests centred mainly on the architecture of high-performance computers [6]. In addition to his involvement in the MU5 project at Manchester, about which he has written extensively [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14], he was also involved in the design and implementation of an experimental vector processor [15] and a local area network[16].
At the University of Edinburgh his main interests involved the use of HASE, a Hierarchical computer Architecture design and Simulation Environment[17]developed under his direction. HASE has been used as a virtual laboratory for research in computer architecture and as a teaching/learning environment [18][19] He personally developed a number of HASE models for student demonstrations and exercises and was principal investigator on research projects to create and use simulation models of RAID systems [20][21] and the UKQCD computer architecture [22][23].
Ibbett retired from the University in 2006 but continued to create HASE models of historically interesting computers as a way of preserving knowledge about their principles of operation, e.g. the Manchester University Atlas and MU5 computers, the CDC 6600 and the Cray 1.
Professional Contributions
editFrom 1987 to 1995 Ibbett was Head of the Department of Computer Science and from 1994 to 2000 was a University Vice-Principal. He was instrumental in setting up the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC), the Institute for System Level Integration and the Scottish Institute for Enterprise.
He has contributed to the work of numerous professional bodies involved in offering degree level examinations, in accrediting computing degrees and in supporting academic staff in computing. These include the BCS Board of Examiners (1974-1988, Chair 1982-1987) [24], the BCS Qualifications and Standards Board and the Engineering Council Registration Standards Committee (2007-2013). He was the first Chair (1994-96) of the Conference (now Council) of Professors and Heads of Computing (CPHC) and Chair (2000-2011) of the Higher Education Academy Information and Computer Sciences Subject Centre Advisory Board. He was Chair (2010-2017) of the Accreditation Committee of EQANIE, the European Quality Assurance Network for Informatics Education [25][26], and Vice-President of EQANIE (2015-2017).
References
editCategory:1941 births Category:British computer scientists Category:People associated with Edinburgh Category:Academics of the University of Edinburgh Category:People associated with Manchester Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Category:People educated at Burton upon Trent Grammar School
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"A Digitization System for a Scanning Spectrometer". Journal of Scientific Instruments. 43 (4): 209. 1966. Bibcode:1966JScI...43..209H. doi:10.1088/0950-7671/43/4/301.
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"A Three-channel Astronomical Photoelectric Spectropolarimeter". Journal of Scientific Instruments. 2. 1 (4): 409. 1968. Bibcode:1968JPhE....1..409C. doi:10.1088/0022-3735/1/4/310.
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"A Digital Recording System for Fourier Transform Spectrometry". Journal of Scientific Instruments. 2. 1 (7): 745–748. 1968. Bibcode:1968JPhE....1..745I. doi:10.1088/0022-3735/1/7/311. PMID 5703443.
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"Evaluation of Computer Architectures Using ISPS". Computers and Digital Techniques (IEE Procs. Part E). 1980.
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"An Evaluation of Some Proposed Name Space Architectures Using ISPS". Computers and Digital Techniques (IEE Procs. Part E). 1980.
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Architecture of High Performance Computers, 2nd Edition, Vols. I and II. Macmillan Educational. 1989.
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The MU5 Computer System. The Macmillan Press. 1979.
{{cite book}}: Cite uses deprecated parameter|authors=(help) - ^ R. N. Ibbett (1972). "The MU5 Instruction Pipeline". Computer Journal. 15.
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"Array Operations in MU5". ACM Conference on Programming and Compilers for Parallel and Vector Machines, New York. 1975.
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The MU5 Computer Monitoring System. Eurocomp. London. 1976.
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"The MU5 Name Store". Computer Journal. 20 (3): 227–231. 1977. doi:10.1093/comjnl/20.3.227.
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"The Development of the MU5 Computer System". Communications of the ACM. 1978.
{{cite journal}}: Cite uses deprecated parameter|authors=(help) - ^ R.N. Ibbett (Spring 1999). "The University of Manchester MU5 Project". Annals of the History of Computing. 21. IEEE: 24–33. doi:10.1109/85.759366.
- ^ R.N. Ibbett (2015). "The University of Manchester MU5 Computer System". IEEE Engineering and Technology History Wiki.
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MU6V: A Parallel Vector Processing Unit. 12th International Symposium on Computer Architecture. 1985.
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"Centrenet - A High Performance Local Area Network". Computer Journal. 28 (3): 231–242. 1985. doi:10.1093/comjnl/28.3.231.
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"A Hierarchical Computer Architecture Design and Simulation Environment". ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation. 8 (4): 431–446. October 1998. doi:10.1145/295251.295259. S2CID 11382419.
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An Interactive Environment for the Teaching of Computer Architecture". ACM SIGCSE/SIGCUE Joint Conference on Integrating Technology into Computer Science Education. Barcelona. June 1996.
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"Computer Architecture Simulation Applets for Use in Teaching". Proc Frontiers in Education 2003. Boulder, Colorado. November 2003.
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SIMRAID: An Efficient Performance Evaluation Tool for RAID Systems. Summer Computer Simulation Conference. Canada. August 2006.
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On the Scalability of Storage Sub-System Back-end Networks. International Symposium on Performance Evaluation of Computer Telecommunications Systems. Edinburgh. June 2008.
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"Simulation of a Computer Architecture for Quantum Chromodynamics Calculations". ACM Crossroads. 9 (3): 16–23. Spring 2003. doi:10.1145/904073.904078. S2CID 5796377.
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A Methodology for Simulating Scientific Supercomputing Systems. Summer Computer Simulation Conference. USA. July 2004.
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"Revisions to Examination Syllabuses". BCS Computer Bulletin. September 1983.
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"Criteria and Procedures for Obtaining the Euro-Inf Quality Label". Sibiu, Romania. 2011.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help); Cite uses deprecated parameter|authors=(help); Unknown parameter|conference=ignored (help) - ^ R.N. Ibbett (March 2012). "Europe-wide Accreditation of Informatics Degrees". IFIP News.