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Rick Hetherington is the chief technology officer for Sun's recently formed Microelectronics business unit where he sets the technical direction for Sun's SPARC processor development and related technologies. Hetherington is driving Sun's leadership in the chip multithreading (CMT) approach to processor design, in which multiple cores and multiple threads combine to generate extraordinary throughput and power efficiency.
Prior to his appointment as CTO, Hetherington provided oversight for the architecture, performance and roadmap of UltraSPARC T1(TM) processors and systems as chief architect for Sun's Horizontal Systems group. From 2000 to 2002, Hetherington took a hiatus from Sun to join a networking start-up as VP of engineering.
Hetherington originally joined Sun in 1996 as co-architect of Sun's Project Millennium processor. Prior to Sun, he spent 16 years with Digital Equipment Corp., working on a variety of VAX and Alpha processors and systems. His last position at Digital was system architect of EV6 (21264) processor.
Hetherington earned his bachelor's degree from Pennsylvania State University and currently holds 47 patents. | 