Mark Edward Dean (born March 2, 1957) is an American inventor and computer engineer. He developed the ISA bus with his partner Dennis Moeller, and he led a design team for making a one-gigahertz computer processor chip. He holds three of nine PC patents for being the co-creator of the IBM personal computer released in 1981. In 1995, Dean was named the first ever African-American IBM Fellow.

Dean was elected as a member into the National Academy of Engineering in 2001.

In 2000, Mark discussed a hand held device that would be able to display media content, like a digital newspaper. In August 2011, Dean stated that he uses a tablet computer instead of a PC in his blog.

Early life

Dean was born in Jefferson City, Tennessee. Dean displayed an affinity for technology and invention at a young age. His father, James, worked with electrical equipment for turbines and spillways. Dean's father would often bring him on work trips, introducing him to engineering. When Dean was young, he and his father constructed a tractor from scratch. In middle school, Dean had made up his mind on becoming a computer engineer. He attended Jefferson City High School in Tennessee, where he excelled in both academics and athletics. While in high school during the 1970s, Dean built his own personal computer.

Recognition

Dean is the first African-American to become an IBM Fellow, which is the highest level of technical excellence at the company. In 1997, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2001. In 1997, Dean was awarded the Black Engineer of the Year Presidents Award. From August 2018 to July 2019, Dean was the interim dean of the UT's Tickle College of Engineering.

As of April 26, 2019, April 25 is officially Mark Dean Day in Knox County, Tennessee.

Career and Achievements

Dean graduated with a bachelors in electrical engineering during 1979. Soon after, he got a job at IBM as an engineer. His first task at the company was to create a word processor adapter for the IBM System/23 Datamaster microcomputer. During this time, he also created the ISA bus that allowed additional components to be connected to a PC. His work got him promoted in 1982 to chief engineer of PC design, where he worked with a team to develop the IBM PC. In the same year, Dean earned his master's degree in electrical engineering. In 1999, Dean and his team developed a gigahertz microchip, the first in the world.

Dean was the President overseeing the company's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California. At one point, Dean was CTO for IBM Middle East and Africa. He retired from the company in 2013 and became a professor at University of Tennessee. Mark Dean is the John Fisher Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Tennessee.

Dean now holds more than 20 patents, and his work led to development of the color PC monitor.

Patents by Mark Dean

Name of PatentPatent NumberDate of Patent
Color video display system having programmable border color4437092March 13, 1984
Composite video color signal generation from digital color signals4442428April 10, 1984
Microcomputer system with bus control means for peripheral processing devices4528626July 9, 1985
Refresh generator system for a dynamic memory4575826March 11, 1986
Data processing system including a main processor and a co-processor and co-processor error handling logic4598356July 1, 1986
Computer system including a page mode memory with decreased access time and method of operation thereof5034917July 23, 1991
Method and apparatus for selectively posting write cycles using the 82385 cache controller5045998September 3, 1991
Bidirectional buffer with latch and parity capability5107507April 21, 1992
Control of pipelined operation in a microcomputer system employing dynamic bus sizing with 80386 processor and 82385 cache controller5125084June 23, 1992
System bus preempt for 80386 when running in an 80386/82385 microcomputer system with arbitration5129090July 7, 1992
Microprocessor hold and lock circuitry5170481December 8, 1992
Delayed cache write enable circuit for a dual bus microcomputer system with an 80386 and 823855175826December 29, 1992
Data processing apparatus for selectively posting write cycles using the 82385 cache controller5327545July 5, 1994
Connecting a short word length non-volatile memory to a long word length address/data multiplexed bus5448521September 5, 1995
Microcomputer system employing address offset mechanism to increase the supported cache memory capacity5450559September 12, 1995
System and method for prefetching information in a processing system5544342August 6, 1996
Non-contiguous mapping of I/O addresses to use page protection of a process5548746August 20, 1996
Self-time processor with dynamic clock generator having plurality of tracking elements for outputting sequencing signals to functional units5553276September 3, 1996
Method and system for reading from a m-byte memory utilizing a processor having a n-byte data bus5603041February 11, 1997
Method and system in a distributed shared-memory data processing system for determining utilization of nodes by each executed thread6266745July 24, 2001
Method and system in a distributed shared-memory data processing system for determining utilization of shared-memory included within nodes by a designated application6336170January 1, 2002
Data storage device for recording to magnetic thread7206163April 17, 2007
Method and apparatus for constructing a neuroscience-inspired artificial neural network with visualization of neural pathways9753959September 5, 2017
Method and apparatus for constructing, using and reusing components and structures of an artificial neural network10019470July 10, 2018
Method and apparatus for providing random selection and long-term potentiation and depression in an artificial network10055434August 21, 2018
Method and apparatus for constructing a dynamic adaptive neural network array (DANNA)10095718October 9, 2018
Method and apparatus for providing real-time monitoring of an artificial neural network10248675April 2, 2019

External links

  • Brown, Alan S. (Spring 2015). (PDF). The Best of Tau Beta Pi. Tau Beta Pi.