The object
Patterson co-developed Berkeley RISC hardware and the design principles that replaced complex instruction sets with faster simpler processor implementations. RISC became a physical chip architecture used broadly in embedded, mobile, server and consumer-electronics hardware. worldwide.
01
What David did
Co-developed the Berkeley RISC processor architecture and made the case for reduced-instruction-set processor design.
02
Why it matters
The ACM's Turing Award citation calls RISC a foundational computing architecture with pervasive implementation in modern processors.
03
Living-status check
UC Berkeley's 2026 faculty profile lists Patterson as distinguished engineer and professor emeritus.