CBE for services to computing

The man who helped to develop the BBC computer and the Arm microprocessor has been awarded a CBE in the New Year Honours list for services to computer science.

Professor Stephen Furber is now working at the University of Manchester on the Spinnaker Project, a £1m effort to create a computer that can mimic the behaviour of the human brain.

In the 1980s, Furber helped to create the BBC Micro while working for Acorn. The educational device was first sold in the UK in 1981 and went on to become one of the world’s most popular home computers.

“We thought it was a pretty important machine, but I do not think anybody anticipated at that stage how rapidly the home computer market would take off,” Furber told Computing.

“Early discussions indicated potential sales of 15,000, which was good business for Acorn.”

The BBC Micro eventually sold about 1.5 million units worldwide, and Professor Furber went on to work on the powersaving Arm processor that is widely used in today’s mobile devices.

The microprocessor market has recently gone through a period of change which will have major repercussions in the years ahead, according to Furber.

“Everyone has given up trying to make a single processor go faster, and even the high-end companies are making multi-core chips which are not as fast as they could be,” he said.

“It means we can now approach the Holy Grail of computer science ­ which is how to make parallel machines work for general applications.”

The shift in focus by the chip-making industry will hasten the development of parallel computing, which will change both the computers themselves and the way that they can be used, said Furber.

“The way users interface with machines changes qualitatively with each increase in processing power,” he said.

“We are now looking for computers that can do a half-decent job of understanding spoken language, or devices that can survey their environment and comprehend what is going on around them.”