Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
On October 8, 2025, Professor John Hennessy, past President of Stanford University (2000-2016) and Chairman of Alphabet Inc., was in conversation with Alan J Weissberger of the IEEE Technology blog at SCU. They discussed the history of technologies and companies in Silicon Valley since the late 1970s. Their conversation included: 1.] the founding of MIPS Technologies, the evolution of RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) and its applications in high performance workstations, gaming machines, smart phones and webscale compute servers; 2.] the evolution of GPUs, the computational demands of machine learning, and the emergence of domain-specific architectures (DSAs); 3] the founding of Atheros Communications (acquired by Qualcomm in 2011) and its development of chip sets for WiFi, Bluetooth, and other other OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing) technologies.
As a Google/Alphabet Board member for more than two decades, Prof. Hennessy played a role in helping develop Google’s strategic direction. Google’s research activities including "moonshot" projects were discussed along with the pervasiveness of AI and its future.
Later in the program, IEEE past President Tom Coughlin presented recent IEEE accomplishments, current focus areas, and suggestions on how to strengthen the world’s largest technology non-profit organization. A lively audience Q&A session followed with the last question of "risks to Silcon Valley technology dominance" particularly relevent.
On October 8, 2025, Professor John Hennessy, past President of Stanford University (2000-2016) and Chairman of Alphabet Inc., was in conversation with Alan J Weissberger of the IEEE Technology blog at SCU. They discussed the history of technologies and companies in Silicon Valley since the late 1970s. Their conversation included: 1.] the founding of MIPS Technologies, the evolution of RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) and its applications in high performance workstations, gaming machines, smart phones and webscale compute servers; 2.] the evolution of GPUs, the computational demands of machine learning, and the emergence of domain-specific architectures (DSAs); 3] the founding of Atheros Communications (acquired by Qualcomm in 2011) and its development of chip sets for WiFi, Bluetooth, and other other OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing) technologies.
As a Google/Alphabet Board member for more than two decades, Prof. Hennessy played a role in helping develop Google’s strategic direction. Google’s research activities including "moonshot" projects were discussed along with the pervasiveness of AI and its future.
Later in the program, IEEE past President Tom Coughlin presented recent IEEE accomplishments, current focus areas, and suggestions on how to strengthen the world’s largest technology non-profit organization. A lively audience Q&A session followed with the last question of "risks to Silcon Valley technology dominance" particularly relevent.
