7 February 1997

Randal E. Bryant Awarded Carnegie Mellon's President's Professorship of Computer Science

PITTSBURGH--Computer Science Professor Randal E. Bryant is the first recipient of Carnegie Mellon University's President's Professorship of Computer Science, an endowed chair created by the president of the university.

Bryant, who joined Carnegie Mellon~s faculty in 1984, has achieved recognition in academia and industry for developing computer-aided design tools for simulating and verifying digital circuits, and for his research in symbolic manipulation and parallel computation.

"Since his days as a graduate student at MIT, Randy has been making breakthroughs by applying computer tools to the design of hardware," said James H. Morris, head of Carnegie Mellon~s Computer Science Department. "He is best known for the MOSSIM switch-level chip simulator and for ordered binary decision diagrams (BDDs), a vital tool that others are using in the formal verification of hardware and software systems."

The MOSSIM simulator, developed in 1983, was the first tool that could accurately model the behavior of very large scale integrated (VLSI) circuits. The program was used by Intel Corp. for more than 10 years to simulate three generations of processors in its 80X86 line. Intel is now using COSMOS, Bryant's successor to MOSSIM, to simulate its most advanced processors. Digital Equipment Corp. also has used MOSSIM to simulate its Alpha microprocessors.

"Professor Bryant's work is particularly noteworthy because he has carried an essentially mathematical insight about the representation of Boolean functions all the way to tools that work at heart of the semiconductor design process in industry," said Carnegie Mellon President Robert Mehrabian. "It's a fine exemplar of Carnegie Mellon's commitment to making research pay off for industry."

"Professor Bryant's research and teaching at Carnegie Mellon have distinguished him as an international leader in computer hardware and software design, and as one of the university's brightest stars," added Provost Paul Christiano.

In 1985, Bryant developed several very efficient algorithms based on BDDs to manipulate the switching functions that form the basis for computer designs. Since then, researchers at other universities and industry, as well as Carnegie Mellon, have used the algorithms to represent and manipulate large state sets when verifying computer chips.

Bryant was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1990. He has been listed in Who's Who in America since 1991. In 1995, Bryant and Carnegie Mellon Professor Edmund M. Clarke, along with Clarke~s former graduate student, Ken McMillan, received a technical excellence award from the Semiconductor Research Corp. (SRC) for their work on hardware verification using BDDs. Bryant also has received Inventor Recognition Awards from the SRC.

Morris described Bryant as a dedicated teacher, esteemed by his colleagues and highly respected for his even-handed judgment, which has won him the chairmanship of numerous committees and other activities important to the functioning of the Computer Science Department.

Bryant holds a bachelor's degree in applied mathematics from the University of Michigan. He received his doctor~s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981. He was an assistant professor of computer science at the California Institute of Technology before coming to Carnegie Mellon.

Bryant has been a consultant for a number of companies, including Hewlett-Packard Corp., IBM, Digital Equipment Corporation, and Fujitsu.

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