
A job at Yale in the 1960s set Susan Eggers on a path in computer science - jacquesm
https://egc.yale.edu/how-job-yale-1960s-set-susan-eggers-groundbreaking-path-computer-science
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emmelaich
I love this...

> _Almost immediately after she started to talk, they began to speak up, so
> she sprayed them with water and they never cut her off again._

No point in responding with pleas to straight up rudeness.

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andrewflnr
She helped invent hyperthreading. How have I not heard of her before?
[https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~eggers/](https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~eggers/)

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jtuple
Wow, never knew this backstory about Professor Eggers!

It's kinda crazy how often seemingly random events and chance encounters are
often the catalyst for major life outcomes. Even more so when they trigger an
outcome that hadn't even been considered or "the plan" up to that point.

Playing video games as a kid, and online MUDs as a teen, directly led to my
eventual career in software and opportunity to rise out of poverty.

25 years later and my current social circle / work colleagues have no idea I
was a poor kid of a single parent living off free school lunches and food
stamps.

Still amazes me how little interest there is in CS/tech/software for the
average American -- more so for women/minorities. Most kids go through their
doctor, vet, firefighter, detective, astronaut, lawyer, ... phases but
computers are rarely on the radar.

\---

On completely different note, as a UW undergrad I fondly remember taking a
computer architecture seminar with Prof. Eggers back in 2005.

I was super interested in architecture back then, and had already decided to
head to grad school to do research in the area. Even though I had already read
most of the papers we covered, it was still great round tabling things and
have Eggers chime in with her perspective.

Too bad computer architecture was kinda past it's prime at that point. Took me
a few years into grad school + several Intel internships to finally realize
that though.

We had a flurry of advancements from CISC, RISC, superscalar, out-of-order
execution, SMT/HyperThreading, CMT (eg. Sun's Niagara, later AMD Bulldozer),
RAW/Tilera, VLIW/EPIC/Itanium, etc. Then things just sorta stalled. It's 2020
and we're mostly just putting a zillion cores in a die/package each with
uarchs that haven't changed much in 10-15 years.

Memory, interconnect, wider SIMD, and (recently) AI focused features are the
main topics thesedays. Oh, and low power/mobile...but that's less fun.

Personally pivoted to distributed systems for a few years, and now static
analysis/abstract interpretation. All interesting, and a crazy fun career so
far. But, kinda miss the alternative timeline where computer architecture was
still a rapidly innovating field to build a career in.

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magthor
I was lucky enough to attend classes by Susan Eggers and Hank Levy in UW's
professional master's program back in 2002. Not only amazing researchers but
also great teachers.

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_wldu
I think the Einstein picture is from the campus of Georgia Tech.

~~~
drfuchs
The Einstein statue pictured is on the grounds of the National Academy of
Sciences building in Washington DC.

[http://www.nasonline.org/about-nas/visiting-nas/nas-
building...](http://www.nasonline.org/about-nas/visiting-nas/nas-building/the-
grounds.html)

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jakobmartz3
Surprised I didn't hear about her sooner.

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ncmncm
tl;dr Invented hyperthreading, got the Eckert-Mauchly award in 2018.

