Dave Ditzel has a legendary history with computing and microprocessors. He joined AT&T Bell Labs to work on C language development. While there, he developed several generations of processors designed to execute optimized compiled C programs including CRISP, Bell Labs’s “C-language Reduced Instruction Set Processor.”
At Bell Labs, Ditzel also co-authored the foundational RISC document, “The Case for the Reduced Instruction Set Computer,” with UC Berkeley’s Professor David Patterson. Ditzel then joined Sun Microsystems as CTO of the SPARC Technology Business, where he led development of the SPARC RISC processor architecture and the 64-bit SPARC ISA. Oracle bought Sun Microsystems in 2010 and later discontinued corporate SPARC development in 2016. But thanks to SPARC International, the SPARC ISA continues, as fully open, non-proprietary, royalty-free IP.