Peter Hofstee

Who is Peter Hofstee?

Harm Peter Hofstee was born in the Netherlands and received his Doctorandus in theoretical physics from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, in 1988. In 1994 he earned his PhD from Caltech; after that, he spent two years on the faculty.

Hofstee joined the IBM Austin Research Laboratory in 1996, where he worked on the world's first gigahertz CMOS microprocessor prototype and other high-performance microprocessor designs. In mid-2000, Hofstee joined the team to develop the concept of the Cell Broadband Engine, which is the central processing unit of the PlayStation 3, and has already found a number of other uses. He is currently the chief architect of the Synergistic Processor Element of the Cell microprocessor. Hofstee has more than 30 issued patents and over 60 patents pending, most of them Cell-related.