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Suhas Patil

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Suhas Patil
Born1944 (age 81–82)
Jamshedpur, India
Alma materIIT Kharagpur (B.Tech., 1965)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (S.M., 1967; Sc.D., 1970)
OccupationsComputer scientist, entrepreneur
Known forFounder of Cirrus Logic
ChildrenDJ Patil

Suhas S. Patil (born 1944) is an Indian-American computer scientist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He founded Cirrus Logic, a fabless semiconductor company, after developing the Storage/Logic Array (S/LA) method of silicon compilation during his academic career at MIT and the University of Utah. Patil's research covered computer architecture, parallel processing, very-large-scale integration design, and integrated-circuit design automation.[1][2] He is known in theoretical computer science for describing the cigarette smokers problem for concurrent computing in a 1971 MIT technical report.[3] In December 1992 Patil co-founded TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) and served as its first president.

Early life and education

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Patil grew up in Jamshedpur, India. His father was the first person in the family to attend university, earning an engineering degree and working at Tata Steel.[1] Patil studied intermediate science at St. Xavier's College, Kolkata before enrolling at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, where he earned a B.Tech. in electronics and electrical communications in 1965.[1] He then attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning an S.M. in 1967 and an Sc.D. in electrical engineering in 1970.[1][2]

Career

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Academic career

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From 1970 to 1975, Patil served as assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, where he also served as assistant director of Project MAC, a research laboratory that developed early time-sharing computer systems.[1] In February 1971, he published Project MAC Computation Structures Group Memo 57, describing the cigarette smokers problem as a formal proof that certain synchronization constraints cannot be resolved using only Dijkstra's semaphore P and V operations.[3] He gave a $1.5 million gift to MIT for construction of the Suhas and Jayashree Patil Conference Center at the Stata Center.[1] From 1975 to 1980, he was associate professor of computer science at the University of Utah.[2][4] During this period he developed the S/LA method of silicon compilation, which became the technical foundation of Patil Systems.[1][2]

S/LA silicon compilation

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Traditional programmable logic arrays of the 1970s separated combinational logic into distinct AND and OR planes and lacked distributed storage. Patil's S/LA architecture combined these into a single uniform two-dimensional array and interspersed flip-flops directly within the array columns, so that the array's logical representation mapped deterministically to its physical layout on a VLSI chip.[5] This automated translation from logic description to circuit layout reduced the custom engineering effort required to produce application-specific integrated circuits.[1][6]

Cirrus Logic

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Patil founded Patil Systems, Inc. in 1981 in Salt Lake City, applying the S/LA technology to microchip-level controllers for computer hard disk drives.[1][2] The company was renamed Cirrus Logic in 1984 when it relocated to Silicon Valley, and Michael Hackworth joined as president and CEO in January 1985.[7] Patil served as chairman from founding until 1997, when he stepped down and was appointed Chairman Emeritus; he retired from that position in 2009.[8]

Later ventures

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After leaving the chairmanship of Cirrus Logic, Patil co-founded Digité, Inc., a software company focused on collaborative project management tools for distributed teams, and served as its chairman.[9] He also founded Cradle Technologies and served as its CEO, developing multi-processor system-on-chip architectures for networked video applications.[1][10] During this period Patil also mentored K. B. Chandrashekar in the founding of Exodus Communications; the company's IPO valued it at $560 million.[11]

TiE

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In December 1992, Patil co-founded TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) in Silicon Valley alongside eight others, including AJ Patel and Kanwal Rekhi.[12] In late 1993 he was chosen as TiE's first president, and the organization was formally incorporated in 1994. He introduced the concept of Charter Members, successful entrepreneurs who would mentor aspiring entrepreneurs and help underwrite TiE's operations.[12] He also serves on the boards of The Tech Museum[11] and the World Affairs Council of Northern California.[citation needed]

Personal life

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Patil's son is DJ Patil, who served as the first Chief Data Scientist of the United States in the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Fairbairn, Douglas (August 2, 2010). "Oral History of Dr. Suhas Patil" (PDF). Computer History Museum. Retrieved August 18, 2017.
  2. ^ a b c d e "Silicon Compiler Technology that Enabled Cirrus Logic to Become a Fabless Semiconductor Company". MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories. Retrieved May 25, 2026.
  3. ^ a b Patil, Suhas S. (February 1971). Limitations and Capabilities of Dijkstra's Semaphore Primitives for Coordination among Processes (Technical report). MIT, Project MAC, Computation Structures Group. Memo 57.
  4. ^ "History". University of Utah School of Computing. Retrieved August 17, 2017.
  5. ^ Patil, Suhas S.; Welch, Terry A. (September 1979). "A Programmable Logic Approach for VLSI". IEEE Transactions on Computers. C-28 (9): 594–601. doi:10.1109/TC.1979.1675426.
  6. ^ A Decade of Semiconductor Start-ups (PDF) (Report). Computer History Museum. p. 7. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 15, 2025. Retrieved May 25, 2026.
  7. ^ "Cirrus Logic, Inc. History". FundingUniverse. Archived from the original on December 13, 2025. Retrieved May 25, 2026.
  8. ^ Patil, Suhas. Suhas Patil on Giving Back. Retrieved May 25, 2026 – via YouTube.
  9. ^ "Digite Chairman, Dr. Suhas Patil Has Won The Entrepreneurial Achievement Award!". NimbleWork / Digite, Inc. Archived from the original on July 17, 2025. Retrieved May 25, 2026.
  10. ^ "Dr. Suhas Patil". Computer History Museum. Archived from the original on January 22, 2026. Retrieved May 25, 2026.
  11. ^ a b Menon, Jaya (March 25, 2019). "At The Cusp Of A New World: Suhas and Jayashree Patil". India Currents. Archived from the original on September 27, 2023. Retrieved May 25, 2026.
  12. ^ a b "The Genesis of TiE". TiE Global. Archived from the original on May 8, 2026. Retrieved May 25, 2026.
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