Mark Dean:
A SHORT BIOGRAPHY
| Event | Date | Place and description |
|---|---|---|
| Birth | 2nd of March 1957 | Jefferson City, Tennessee, USA |
| Education | 1979 | BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tennessee |
| 1982 | MSc in Electrical Engineering from Florida Atlantic University | |
| 1992 | PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University | |
| Inventions | 1981 | ISA bus |
| 1981 | Color PC Monitor | |
| 1999 | First 1GHz chip |
Early life
As a young boy, Mark built a tractor from nothing with the help of his father (Prahl 2019). He graduated top of his bachelor's class in 1979. After graduating, he turned down HP (National Center for Computing Education 2020) and chose to work for IBM in 1980. His first job as an engineer at IBM was developing a word processor adapter for IBM's Datamaster terminal.
IBM Career
On project "chess", IBM's secret project to build their first PC, Mark built the 8 bit ISA bus that would allow the team to use off-the-shelf components from different manufacturers (Yitbarek 2020). It was later termed the ISA bus by industry manufacturers to distinguish it from clones that flooded the market. His work earned him co-ownership of 3 of the 9 patents from the PC (Justia).
The entry of the IBM Personal Computer 5150 in 1981 brought credibility to the fray of the PC world (Yitbarek 2020). Software and hardware producers manufactured "IBM PC compatible" products that used the bus. This, Mark Dean believes, gave rose to the PC industry as we know it today (Yitbarek 2020). Later, with the release of the PC/AT in 1984, he updated the bus to a backward compatible 16 bit bus. After completing his master's degree, he became the head of PC design at IBM at 25. (National Center for Computing Education 2020). In a video interview (AIPTV 2021), he recounts how the design of the IBM PC/AT was based on his master's project.
Other achievements and life after IBM
After obtaining his PhD in 1992 (Prahl 2019), he became an IBM Fellow four years later. In 1997, he received the Black Engineer of the Year President's Award and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in the USA (National Inventors Hall of Fame). Dean's team of engineers created the first 1GHz computer processor chip in 1999. He also received more than 40 patents for his inventions (Yitbarek 2020) and rose to become IBM Vice President and chief technology officer for IBM Middle East and Africa. In 2001, he became a member of the National Academy of Engineers. After leaving IBM in 2013 (Yitbarek 2020), he worked as a Professor at the University of Tennessee and was the interim dean of the university's College of Engineering in 2018. His work gave way to the PCI and the Accelerated Graphics Port.
