Susan J. Eggers

Microsoft Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Emerita.  A computer architect who has made many important contributions, her home run being the invention of Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT).   Her work enabled the inclusion of multithreading -- a source of very significant performance improvement -- in modern microprocessors from Intel, IBM, and others.  Her team invented the idea, coined the term, and demonstrated how SMT could better utilize processor resources.  Only a handful of researchers in academia or industry have had comparable impact on these widely-used microprocessors. Her Berkeley thesis work (and her follow-on studies) closed the book on problems related to data sharing in multiprocessors, providing crucial insights into the relationship between program data access patterns, coherency protocols, and cache performance. While Eggers could be elected to the American Academy purely through her technical contributions, she also represents an inspiring success story.  She received a bachelor's degree in Economics from Connecticut College in 1965. In 1983, following 18 years of varying employment, she entered Berkeley to become a computer architect.  In 1989, at the age of 46, Eggers began her stellar faculty career.