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NEC C&C Foundation The NEC C&C Foundation

 

2008 Recipients of C&C Prize

Group A

Dr. Hideo Aiso

Dr. Hideo Aiso

Director, Board of Trustees of Tokyo University of Technology
(Former President, Tokyo University of Technology)
Professor Emeritus, Keio University



Citation

For contributions to the advancement and growth of the computer industry through research and development on computer systems, and for the development of new disciplinary areas in ICT, resulting in the progress of education and research methodologies

Achievement

Dr. Hideo Aiso was involved in a research project for the development of transistor-based computers at the Electrotechnical Laboratory (ETL) of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry in the latter half of the 1950s. He was charged with the basic design of logic circuits for a fully transistor-operated computer, dubbed the ETL Mark IV. Initially, he was expected to design a basic circuit that would work with as few transistors as possible due to their high cost. However, far beyond all expectations, he created a dynamic logic circuit working with a single transistor by taking advantage of pulse-wave techniques. Furthermore, he demonstrated the circuit’s excellent stability, which was suitable for use in practical operations. The ETL Mark IV went into use in the fall of 1957. Its success led the ETL to promote technical guidelines and technology transfers to companies highly motivated to stimulate the domestic computer industry. He undertook responsibility for promoting the technologies and made great contributions to establishing foundations for the computer industry. He then developed computers with multi-functionality, higher performance, and larger capacity for practical use, in addition to playing a central role in the research and development of the ETL Mark V and VI.

Dr. Aiso then moved on to an academic sphere, but remained involved in the research and development of computer architecture covering parallel processing, distributed processing, adaptive processing, associative processing, specially designed functional processing, and more. Together with those outstanding achievements, he fostered the development of a number of competent academics, researchers, and engineers, who now play active roles in current ICT research areas. Moreover, as the chairperson of numerous committees, he actively worked on government projects such as 5th-generation computers, supercomputers, and interoperable computer systems. As a result, he was recognized as a respected opinion leader on computer architecture throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

In the 1990s, based on his perspectives on leading-edge information technologies, he treated all aspects of knowledge in an interrelated manner. The result was the establishment of university departments both for environment and information studies as well as media and governance studies. Each are expected to contribute to the changing shape of society and to give rise to new cultural advancements. In short, Dr. Aiso successfully introduced important knowledge and suggestions to new educational approaches, desirable research, and environmental information science.

The NEC C&C Foundation highly praises Dr. Aiso for his contributions to the advancement of C&C technologies and the progress of our information linked society through research and development on computers, pioneering studies on computer architecture, fostering human resources, promoting government projects on next-generation computers, and establishing university education systems with leading-edge information technologies.