Marcian Hoff
Encyclopedia
Marcian Edward "Ted" Hoff, Jr. (born October 28, 1937 in Rochester, New York
Rochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...

), is one of the inventors of the microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...

. Hoff joined Intel in 1967 as employee number 12, and is credited with coming up with the idea of using a "universal processor" rather than a variety of custom-designed circuits. His insight started the microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...

 revolution in the early 1970s. He is frequently credited with having invented the microprocessor in 1971, although he proposed the architectural idea and an instruction set formulated with Stanley Mazor
Stanley Mazor
Stanley Mazor is an American engineer who was born on 22 October 1941 in Chicago, Illinois. He was one of the designers of the world's first microprocessor, the Intel 4004, together with Ted Hoff, Masatoshi Shima, and Federico Faggin.-Early years:...

 in 1969, and created an innovative silicon design together with Federico Faggin
Federico Faggin
Federico Faggin , who received in 2010 the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by Barack Obama, the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on scientists, engineers, and inventors, at the White House in Washington, is an Italian-born and naturalized U.S...

 that was essential to the realization of the microprocessor in 1970–1971. In 1985, Hoff was named the first Intel Fellow, which is the highest technical position in the company. He stayed in that position until 1988.

Education & work history

He received a bachelor's degree
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...

 in electrical engineering
Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...

 from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Stephen Van Rensselaer established the Rensselaer School on November 5, 1824 with a letter to the Rev. Dr. Samuel Blatchford, in which van Rensselaer asked Blatchford to serve as the first president. Within the letter he set down several orders of business. He appointed Amos Eaton as the school's...

 in 1958, and he applied for his first two patents based on work done for the General Railway Signal Corp. of Rochester, New York
Rochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...

 during the summers of his undergraduate study. He then received a National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...

 Fellowship to enroll in Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

, where he received his master's degree
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...

 in 1959 and Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

 in 1962. As part of his Ph.D. dissertation, Hoff co-invented the least mean squares filter
Least mean squares filter
Least mean squares algorithms are a class of adaptive filter used to mimic a desired filter by finding the filter coefficients that relate to producing the least mean squares of the error signal . It is a stochastic gradient descent method in that the filter is only adapted based on the error at...

 with Bernard Widrow
Bernard Widrow
Bernard Widrow is a U.S. professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University. He is the co-inventor of the Widrow–Hoff least mean squares filter adaptive algorithm with his then doctoral student Ted Hoff...

.

Popular culture

Dr. Hoff was featured in an Intel advertisement, calling him the "rock star" of Intel and comparing him to the rock stars of American culture.

Awards

In 1954, he was one of the Westinghouse Science Talent Search (now Intel STS
Intel Science Talent Search
The Intel Science Talent Search , known for its first 57 years as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search is a research-based science competition in the United States for high school seniors. It has been referred to as "the nation's oldest and most prestigious" science competition. In his speech...

) finalists. He was awarded the Franklin Institute Stuart Ballantine Medal in 1979, the IEEE Cledo Brunetti Award
IEEE Cledo Brunetti Award
The IEEE Cledo Brunetti Award is an award is presented for outstanding contributions to nanotechnology and miniaturization in the electronics arts. It may be presented to an individual or a team of up to three...

 in 1980, and the Franklin Institute Certificate of Merit in 1996. He was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in 1996 and received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2009 from President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

. He was made a Fellow of the Computer History Museum
Computer History Museum
The Computer History Museum is a museum established in 1996 in Mountain View, California, USA. The Museum is dedicated to preserving and presenting the stories and artifacts of the information age, and exploring the computing revolution and its impact on our lives.-History:The museum's origins...

 in 2009. He received the 2011 IEEE/RSE Wolfson James Clerk Maxwell Award.
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