[5][6] He currently is vice chair of the board of directors of the RISC-V Foundation,[7] and the Pardee Professor of Computer Science, Emeritus at UC Berkeley.

[10][11] He is also noted for leading the research on redundant arrays of inexpensive disks (RAID) storage, with Randy Katz.

He then attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree in Mathematics in 1969.

[13][14][15][16] Patterson is an important advocate and developer of the concept of reduced instruction set computing and coined the term "RISC".

[12][17] Patterson also led the Network of Workstations (NOW) project at Berkeley, an early effort in the area of computer clustering.

[10] The award attributed them for pioneering "a systematic, quantitative approach to the design and evaluation of computer architectures with enduring impact on the microprocessor industry".

[11] In 2022 he was awarded the Charles Stark Draper Prize by the National Academy of Engineering alongside John L. Hennessy, Steve Furber and Sophie Wilson for contributions to the invention, development, and implementation of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) chips.