The late Professor Emeritus of Kyoto University, Hiroshi Hagiwara (1926 - 2014) was a Japanese computer pioneer. Between 1970's and 80's, he developed QA-1 and QA-2, which were computers with four arithmetic logic units (ALUs) controlled simultaneously and in parallel by a very long instruction word (VLIW) and used them for various research purposes including computer graphics and language processing.
When I studied at the Computer Architecture Laboratory he had already left the lab. Unlike most of my fellow graduates of the Department of Information Science I started off my career in business earlier rather than pursuing academic one. Thus my acquaintance with Hagiwara-sensei was limited except his monumental (literally) QA-2 computer enshrined in the lab and his book on computer hardware used as the textbook for his undergraduate class.
His books was filled with interesting illustrations of mechanisms for data input and output in 1970's including punch card readers and teleprinters. I had a chance to talk him in person at some alumni function about the book and he told me he really enjoyed the research about such devices for writing it. I felt his passion for connecting computing power to real world applications and I was really impressed.
There are plenty of people who received his tutelage and I just barely qualify, however, he had a great influence on my career especially in having courage to be a pioneer, conceiving innovative architecture and making it real.
R.I.P.
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