Artifact Details
Title
Crawford, John H. oral history : 2014 FellowCatalog Number
102746866Type
TextDate
2014-02-24Contributor
| Crawford, John, Interviewee |
| Dennis, Eric, Media Producer; Videographer |
| Fairbairn, Doug, Interviewer |
| Plutte, Jon, Media Director |
Publisher
Computer History MuseumPlace of Publication
Mountain View, CaliforniaExtent
40 p.Format
PDFCopyright Holder
Computer History MuseumDescription
John Crawford grew up in suburban Philadelphia, the son of an engineer at Pennsylvania Bell. At that time his biggest passion was music, playing piano, trombone, and guitar. He entered Brown University intending to major in math. A computer course in his freshman year steered him in that direction, so he graduated with a degree in Applied Math with a focus on computer science. At that point he entered the Master’s Program at the University of North Carolina. At that point, one of his key interests was in computer architecture.In the spring of 1977, he was ready to enter the workforce. After considering a number of options, he decided to join Intel in California.
His first job was doing various small programming tasks. Over the next couple of years, he gained recognition and joined the 80386 development team, where his software expertise was valued. Over the next several years, he took on increasing responsibility and became the lead architect of the 80486 and follow on Pentium processors. He was successful in incorporating some of the key concepts of RISC computing into the Intel architecture that allowed Intel to fend off the competition from this key advance in computing.
John has won a number of key awards recognizing his role in keeping Intel in a leadership position in the worldwide microprocessor marketplace. He is currently an Intel Fellow, and in 2014 was named Fellow of the Computer History Museum.
