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Dennis Allison


As of April 2007, I no longer maintain an office in the Gates Building at Stanford. My Stanford presence is now virtual and located in CyberSpace. i

There are messy unresolved details such as where to send snail (aka US) mail and where to send FedEx and UPS packages. For the moment, a bit of pre-negotiation by email or phone will do the job. At some point there will be a standard transfer point from the Gates building to whereever I am physically located. Right now, electronic mail is the best point of contact, and. failing that, telephone to the number listed below.

Computer Systems Laboratory
Stanford University
Stanford CA 94305
+1 (415) 691-6156 will reach me anywhere in the world
allison@stanford.edu
Skype: think5-dra

Capsule Biography

I am a Lecturer in the Computer Systems Laboratory which spans the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Departments at Stanford University. I have held a lectureship position since 1976. I also work as an Independent Consultant.

I have been and continue to be involved with a number of start-up and established companies. My roles in the companies varies from advisory board member, director, technical advisor, founding team member, member of the technical staff, and (most frequently) consultant. I am an editorial consultant for Addison Wesley publishing. I was a long-time member of the editorial board of Microprocessor Report, an authoritative newsletter and information resource about microprocessors and have served as an editor or on the editorial board of a number of technical publications.

I was a founder, with Bob Albrecht, of the People's Computer Company, a California non-profit that played a pivotal role in the development of personal computers.

I have been active in both ACM and IEEE. I am a past IEEE CS Governing Board member and am a past member of the editorial boards of IEEE Computer and IEEE Software. I have been part of the organizing committees for many conferences. Currently I serve on the Advisory Board for the Cool Chips Conference held in Japan each Spring.

Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium (EE380)

I administer the Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium with the able assistance of Andrew Freeman. Eileen Peters Long and John Wharton have shared the organizational tasks for EE380 in the past, but both have moved on to persue other interests.

The EE Computer Systems Colloquium s the direct descendant of the Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium whosd parent was the Digital Systems Laboratory Colloquium founded by Ed McCluskey.

The Colloquium meets every Wednesday during the academic year and presents speakers on a wide range of topics related to computer systems and their applications. The Colloquium is televised via the Stanford Instructional Television Network and Webcast both live and on-demand. The class website, http://www.stanford./edu/class/ee380, lists the current program and includes links to on-demand video for some past lectures. Someday I hope to put all 30+ years of lectures onto the web.

Research Courses

I advise both Master's and Undergraduate level reading and research courses by special arrangement. Feel free to contact me by email to begin negotiations.

Research Interests

My personal research interests are quite broad and reach beyond the confines of CS and EE. Some of my current interest area include Software Engineering and testing, Computer Architecture, Programming Languages and Compilers (especially optimization, post-compile optimization, binary translation), Distributed Systems, Parallel Programming, algorithm and code generation for multi-core machines, financial mathematics and economics, simulation of emergent systems, computer assisted education including projects like the OLPC initiative, web hosted applications, VLSI Design, Genetic Programming, Robotics and Animats, Cryptography, the Sociology of Computing, and the Analysis of Algorithms. I have an interest in the philosophy of science and some peripheral issues related to proof and belief. I've given up on the language wars, but could be considered a Python bigot. Recently I discovered Lua and find it an interesting language.

Consulting Practice

In addition to my work at Stanford, I have a active consulting practice. I do everything from design and development to acting as an expert in legal disputes, usually over intellectual property rights involving Copyrights, Patents, or Trade Secrets. In the latter instance, I frequently work through The Chatham Group and sometimes on my own.

Addison-Wesley Editorial Adviser

I am an advisor for Addison-Wesley Publishing in the areas of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. If you want to be a published author of a professional reference book or a textbooks, we should talk. I am always looking for potential authors and topics.

People's Computer Company Alumni Website

In the early 1970's, Bob Albrecht and I founded the People's Computer Company, a California not-for-profit corporation that promoted the personal use of computers. PCC published journals (PCC Newspaper, People's Computers, iRecreational Computing, Dr. Dobb's Journal, The Computer Music Journal) and books (What To Do After You Hit Return), ran a store-front computer center, and did outreach programs into the community. I put together a web-site for the alumni and friends of PCC, http://www.svipx.com/pcc put together in anticipation of the 30-th anniversary, now long past. A couple of years ago the server I hosted the site on here at Stanford died and has not been replace. An image of the site is hosted on http://www.svipx.com but some of the fanc cgi does not work. The website has been in need of a facelift for quite some time, but I have not had time to do it. For esample, the old PCC Alumni website includes an interesting collection of Links and Resources. These links are now wildly out of date.