Sophie Wilson
Designer of the ARM Instruction Set
BBC BASIC, and the architecture in every phone on earth
Rating
95Impact score
Domains
Instruction set designMicroprocessorsProgramming languages
Scouting report
Wrote BBC BASIC, then designed the original ARM instruction set with Steve Furber, a RISC architecture so efficient the first silicon ran on leakage current when its power was accidentally disconnected. There are now more ARM cores in the world than any other processor architecture, by a wide margin. Later designed the FirePath processor at Broadcom.
Curator’s note
The chip in your pocket runs her instruction set. So does the other one.
Portrait
Painted from a photograph of Sophie Wilson by Chris Monk, licensed CC BY 2.0.
Sources
- 01Sophie Wilson en.wikipedia.org
- 02ARM architecture en.wikipedia.org