Arvind has died

So sad! Rest in peace.

I got to meet him in his office and have dinner with him once. It was an unforgettable and hugely influential experience.

Two fun anecdotes that have never left me:

- He taught me that IPIs (inter-processor interrupts) are inherently and hugely expensive. Knowing this has helped me with architectural choices more times than I can count.

- He quoted (I think from someone else) a rebuttal to the idea that Physics is the reality and math is just theory. It goes something like: Math is the reality that physicists sometimes discover. Love it.

This is about 25 yrs. back. As a grad student, I used to stumble into his papers pretty regularly. Later, I'd scan for author name and pay a lot more attention if it was by Arvind (also a few others). I'd always smile after looking at the author name. Growing up in India, your last name doesn't mean much.

Not to gloss over his accomplishments, but does anyone know how his mononym stuck? It’s one thing for an entertainer who’s marketed as such, but quite another for an academic.

Not only are his personal accomplishments amazing, but the number of people he taught and mentored who then went on to do the same with the next generation is immense.

His lectures were fun, and he made complex things look easy. I frequently consulted his lecture notes at my first jobs.

RIP Arvind

RIP Prof. Arvind who I was lucky to rub shoulders with during my grad school.

Sad news, I've learned a lot from some of his old course notes and would come across papers coauthored by him. Take care Arvind, I'll write some Bluespec this week in your honor!

I was very fortunate to have worked on Arvind's Monsoon project as a contractor for Motorola. He was the very model of what a professor ought to be: an active and outgoing researcher, an natural educator, a good organizer, and a lively, witty, and gracious man in public. What a loss.

The last time I saw him, at a dinner in Champaign IL around 2005, he told this joke, apropos of MIT's reputation for arrogance:

Someone called a faculty meeting at MIT and said, guys, we have a problem. People say that we're arrogant. We need to come up with some ideas for being less arrogant. Who has an idea?

One of the faculty members stood up and said, I know! I'll teach a course on humility!

The meeting organizer said that's a great idea! A course on humility is exactly what we need! And the meeting was adjourned.

At the end of the semester, a follow-up faculty meeting was called.

The organizer asked, so, what about our course on humility? Let's have a report about it.

The faculty member who taught the course stood up, and said:

We have the best g*d-damned course on humility!

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RIP Arvind.

I just learned of the passing of Prof. Arvind. He was not only my professor, but also a warm human being who opened his home to a hungry and homesick undergraduate. I will never forget the Diwali at his home where he invited me and my friend among others from the MIT community. After the aarti, he told us stories of his graduate school days where he often longed and dreamt of pakoras from home. He then invited us to feast, and we ate well that night. Dear prof Arvind, in addition to your wisdom, it is your kindness that we will pass on to future generations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvind_(computer_scientist) has more information

As a user of Bluespec and a follower of his CA papers, salutes and RIP.

Was he sick? 77 years isn't that old, these days.

RIP Arvind

@dang Black band, and change HN post title to the article's current title, "Arvind, longtime MIT professor and prolific computer scientist, dies at 77"?