Sophie Wilson

Sophie Wilson ( born 1957 in Leeds as Roger Wilson) is a British computer scientist and computer architect. She is known for her participation in the development of the BBC Micro and the ARM RISC processor at Acorn in the 1980s.

Wilson studied computer science in 1975 at the University of Cambridge. While still a student, she developed in 1977 a machine for automatic feeding livestock ( for a company in Harrogate ) and 1978 an 8 -bit microprocessor ( Acorn System 1), which aimed at the home market and was produced from 1979 by Acorn.

Then worked at Acorn (founded by her teacher in Cambridge, the Austrian Hermann Hauser), where they in less than a week, designed the prototype for the BBC Microcomputer with Steve Furber, one in the UK very successful computer project as part of a TV series of the BBC. She also wrote the operating system and the Basic interpreter of the BBC Micro. The computer was sold over one million times and is used in many schools in the UK.

With Furber designed it after the ARM 32- bit RISC processor ( 1985), who also was a huge success. The instruction set has been designed by you. Not only was he in 1986 at BBC Micro used as a co- processor, but also in home computers by Acorn Archimedes (1987) and the Newton PDA from Apple ( 1993). Based on this architecture microprocessors can be found today in many of consumer electronics and mobile phones.

She also designed the video architecture (including codecs and extension of the operating system for video) for computers by Acorn, the Acorn Replay. In the 1990s, it remained a consultant for ARM Ltd.. , Which seceded from Acorn, and worked for the Established in 1990, Eidos Interactive, a manufacturer of video games. Later she worked for Broadcom, where she was the chief architect of the Firepath processor.

In 2012 she was the Computer History Museum Fellow Furber. 2013 she became a member of the Royal Society.

She is transgender (originally Roger Wilson). She has a cameo appearance (as pub landlady ) in the BBC television film Micro Men, which was first aired in 2009 and the history of early British home computer as its theme.