Rate My Professor James Goodman

James R. Goodman is Professor Emeritus of Computer Sciences and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He earned his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1980 and joined the Computer Sciences faculty at UW-Madison as an assistant professor the same year, advancing to full professor during his tenure. In 1986–1987, he spent an academic year on sabbatical at AT&T Bell Laboratories. Goodman's research centers on computer architecture, with particular emphasis on parallel computing, shared-memory multiprocessors, and transactional memory. His investigations into long-term trends in computer design highlight that while raw CPU performance will become less of a bottleneck, distinctions between uniprocessors and multiprocessors will diminish, positioning memory systems and inter-processor communication as pivotal challenges for future architectures.

Goodman's foundational contributions include the seminal 1983 paper 'Using Cache Memory to Reduce Processor-Memory Traffic,' presented at the International Symposium on Computer Architecture, which introduced snooping cache coherence protocols and demonstrated caches' role in conserving memory bandwidth for multiprocessors. Key publications also encompass 'Data Scalar Architectures' (with D. Burger and S. Kaxiras, ISCA 1997), 'Efficient Synchronization: Let Them Eat QOLB' (with A. Kagi and D. Burger, ISCA 1997), 'Speculative Lock Elision: Enabling Highly Concurrent Multithreaded Execution' (2001), and 'Transactional Lock-Free Execution of Lock-Based Programs' (2002). He co-authored the textbook 'A Programmer's View of Computer Architecture' with Karen Miller. His enduring impact on computer science is affirmed by prestigious honors: the 2013 Eckert-Mauchly Award for breakthroughs in shared-memory multiprocessor architecture, IEEE Fellowship in 2007 for shared-memory multiprocessor system design, and ACM Fellowship in 2010 for parallel processor and memory system design.