Hwa C. Torng

Hwa C. Torng (M.S. 1958, Ph.D. 1960), Patent for the first Intel Chip. The patent in question— US patent No. 4,807,115, “Instruction issuing mechanism for processors with multiple functional units”— was granted in 1989 to Cornell Research Foundation, covering a technique invented by Hwa C. Torng, a professor emeritus with Cornell’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Torng’s invention enables microprocessors to increase processing speed by determining which instructions are not dependent on the results of others and allowing the processor to execute those out of order, allowing more instructions to be executed during the same computer clock cycle. Torng came up with the idea in 1982. The Cornell Research Foundation, which then managed the university’s intellectual property, obtained a patent on the technique in 1989, designated as U.S. Patent No. 4,807,115.