Draft:Tomás Lang

❧

Wikipedia

  • Comment: Vast sections of this are not sourced. I have marked many of them, I gave up after a while as there are too many. There is also too much bragging. Please read, carefully. WP:PEACOCK. I strongly suggest asking for help as this is your first article. Are you related to him? If so you need to declare this. Ldm1954 (talk) 21:08, 12 July 2025 (UTC)


Tomas Lang
Born(1938-03-28)March 28, 1938
Czechoslovakia
Died2018(2018-00-00) (aged 79–80)
Alma materStanford University
University of California Berkeley
University of Chile
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of California Irvine
University of California Los Angeles
Polytechnic University of Catalonia

Tomás Lang (1938-2018) was a computer scientist whose research spanned various areas of computer architecture, with emphasis on computer arithmetic, interconnection networks, scheduling, vector multiprocessors, and memory models. Lang's career and legacy was honored at a workshop established on his name entitled TOMAS2025 held on October 23, 2025. The celebratory session at this workshop included messages by collaborators and former students from multiple locations.

Lang was born in Lidice, Czechoslovakia on March 28, 1938. The family moved to Santiago, Chile, in 1939. He received the Professional Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering from Universidad de Chile in 1965[1], a MS degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1966, and a PhD degree from Stanford University in 1974.[2] 

Lang started his academic career as a faculty member at the University of Chile[1], prior to his Ph.D. studies. Upon receiving his Ph.D. degre, Lang joined the faculty in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) from 1974 to 1978.

In 1978, Lang moved to the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), Barcelona, Spain, where he led a group of faculty that taught and carried out research in computer architecture at the Barcelona School of Informatics (FIB).[3] Lang led the group that was the core faculty of a newly created Department of Computer Architecture. Lang was the founder and first Director of this department, which since then has evolved into a larger academic organization[4] that played a decisive role in creating and setting up the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS). Lang is recognized as key figure in the origins of the DAC[5] and frequently described by Mateo Valero, BSC Director as the seminal person whose guidance and teachings eventually enabled the research group at UPC to reach its international reputation and to establish BSC.[6][7]

In 1982, Lang returned to the UCLA CS Department as a faculty member, while continuing collaborating with faculty at UPC. From 1991 to 2010, Lang served at University of California Irvine (UCI) as a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering[8], and then in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). Since 2010, he was Professor Emeritus at UCI.[8]

Research

Lang’s Ph.D. thesis addressed vector computations in an array computer[2] and led to seminal articles on processor-to-memory interconnections[9] and shuffle-exchange networks.[10] Beyond vector computers and high-performance computation, Lang expanded into the field of computer arithmetic, leading to publications with many citations in areas such as on-the-fly conversion of representations[11], on-line arithmetic and CORDIC algorithms[12][13], novel algorithms for multiplication, division and other arithmetic operations.[14][15][16][17]

Lang's research and collaboration with other faculty at UCLA resulted in foundational books on computer arithmetic[18][19]. He was an active member of the computer arithmetic community, in particular the ARITH Symposium, community that has praised his impact in their field. The EECS Department at UCI has also praised his role as a faculty member.

The scholar contributions from Lang and his collaborators are covered in over two hundred publications, as well as by numerous technical papers and thesis that explicitly mention his name in their acknowledgements.

Lang co-authored the following textbooks, which have been adopted into the curriculum at multiple universities:

  • Digital Arithmetic, Morgan Kaufmann, 2003.[18]
  • Division and square root: digit-recurrence algorithms and implementations, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994.[19]
  • Digital Systems and Hardware/Firmware Algorithms, Wiley and Sons, 1985.[20]
  • Introduction to Digital Systems, Wiley and Sons, 1999.[21] (translated into Chinese and Portuguese).

Lang also co-authored the following research monograph:

  • Matrix Computations on Systolic-Type Arrays, Springer, 1992.[22]

References

  1. 1 2 "About Tomas Lang".
  2. 1 2 Lang, Tomás (August 1974). Vector computations in an array computer. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University.
  3. ↑ "History - Department of Computer Architecture, Universitat Polytecnica de Catalunya, Spain".
  4. ↑ "Department of Computer Architecture - About us".
  5. ↑ "DAC 25th Anniversary (pg. 3)" (PDF).
  6. ↑ "Dr. Mateo Valero presentation" (PDF). MATEO2022 Slides - pg 13-15.
  7. ↑ "Dr. Mateo Valero presentation". MATEO2022 presentation recording (min 9:50-12:50).
  8. 1 2 "EECS Portal - UC Irvine".
  9. ↑ Lang, Tomás (May 1976). "Interconnections Between Processors and Memory Modules Using the Shuffle-Exchange Network". IEEE Transactions on Computers. C-25 (5): 496–503. Bibcode:1976ITCmp.100..496L. doi:10.1109/TC.1976.1674637. ISSN 0018-9340.
  10. ↑ Lang, Tomás; Stone, Harold S. (January 1976). "A Shuffle-Exchange Network with Simplified Control". IEEE Transactions on Computers. C-25 (1): 55–65. Bibcode:1976ITCmp.100...55L. doi:10.1109/TC.1976.5009205. ISSN 0018-9340.
  11. ↑ Ercegovac, M.D.; Lang, Tomás (July 1987). "On-the-Fly Conversion of Redundant into Conventional Representations". IEEE Transactions on Computers. C-36 (7): 895–897. Bibcode:1987ITCmp.100..895E. doi:10.1109/TC.1987.1676986. ISSN 0018-9340.
  12. ↑ Ercegovac, M.D.; Lang, Tomás (June 1990). "Redundant and on-line CORDIC: application to matrix triangularization and SVD". IEEE Transactions on Computers. 39 (6): 725–740. Bibcode:1990ITCmp..39..725E. doi:10.1109/12.53594.
  13. ↑ Lee, J-A.; Lang, Tomás (August 1992). "Constant-factor redundant CORDIC for angle calculation and rotation". IEEE Transactions on Computers. 41 (8): 1016–1025. Bibcode:1992ITCmp..41.1016L. doi:10.1109/12.156544.
  14. ↑ Ercegovac, M.D.; Lang, Tomás (September 1990). "Simple radix-4 division with operands scaling". IEEE Transactions on Computers. 39 (9): 1204–1208. Bibcode:1990ITCmp..39.1204E. doi:10.1109/12.57060.
  15. ↑ Ercegovac, M.D.; Lang, T.; Muller, J.-M.; Tisserand, A. (July 2000). "Reciprocation, square root, inverse square root, and some elementary functions using small multipliers". IEEE Transactions on Computers. 49 (7): 628–637. Bibcode:2000ITCmp..49..628E. doi:10.1109/12.863031.
  16. ↑ Lang, Tomás; Nannarelli, Alberto (October 2006). "A Radix-10 Combinational Multiplier". 2006 Fortieth Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers. pp. 313–317. doi:10.1109/ACSSC.2006.354758. ISBN 1-4244-0784-2.
  17. ↑ Lang, T.; Bruguera, J.D. (August 2004). "Floating-point multiply-add-fused with reduced latency". IEEE Transactions on Computers. 53 (8): 988–1003. Bibcode:2004ITCmp..53..988L. doi:10.1109/TC.2004.44. ISSN 0018-9340.
  18. 1 2 Ercegovac, Miloš D.; Lang, Tomás (2004). Digital arithmetic. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. ISBN 978-1-55860-798-9.
  19. 1 2 Ercegovac, Miloš D.; Lang, Tomás (1994). Division and square root: digit-recurrence algorithms and implementations. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publ. ISBN 978-0-7923-9438-9.
  20. ↑ Ercegovac, Milos; Lang, Tomás (1985). Digital Systems and Hardware/Firmware Algorithms. ISBN 047188393X.
  21. ↑ Ercegovac, Miloš D.; Lang, Tomás; Moreno, Jaime H. (1999). Introduction to digital systems. New York: John Wiley Sons. ISBN 978-0-471-52799-2.
  22. ↑ Moreno, Jaime H.; Lang, Tomás (1992). Matrix Computations on Systolic-Type Arrays. The Kluwer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science. Boston, MA: Springer. ISBN 978-1-4613-6604-1.