The University of Washington has a new chair of the Computer Science & Engineering Department. The university said today that longtime UW professor Henry M. Levy will take over the post from David Notkin.

Levy, an expert in operating systems and computer architecture, has worked at UW for 22 years. His work with professor Susan Eggers and a team of students in the mid-1990s led to the invention of simultaneous multithreading, or "hyper-threading," which gives processors power to execute commands from multiple programs at once. The technology is found in Intel and IBM chips.

Levy also advises tech companies Isilon Systems, Zillow.com and Mercury, as well as the Madrona Venture Group.