HPC Career Notes: November 2019 Edition

By Oliver Peckham

November 4, 2019

In this monthly feature, we’ll keep you up-to-date on the latest career developments for individuals in the high-performance computing community. Whether it’s a promotion, new company hire, or even an accolade, we’ve got the details. Check in each month for an updated list and you may even come across someone you know, or better yet, yourself!


Shawn Brown

The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) has selected Shawn Brown as its next director. Brown joins PSC from McGill University, where he served as the chief technology officer of the Neurohub Project and associate director of research software development at the McGill Centre for Integrative Neuroscience.

“I am extremely excited to be coming home to PSC as its director. Having spent most of my career building high performance computing software and platforms to accelerate scientific discovery across multiple disciplines, I understand the impact that combining world-class computational facilities with a world-renowned staff at two internationally recognized universities can have. I look forward to joining the storied team at PSC and to leading the center into the future of data-driven and highly collaborative science,” said Brown.

KC Claffy

KC Claffy, director of the Center for Applied Data Analysis (CAIDA) at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and an adjunct professor in UC San Diego’s Computer Science and Engineering Department, has been inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame for her pioneering work in the area of internet measurement and analysis.

Claffy published the first of many papers on internet traffic measurement and analysis in 1992, and in 1997 founded CAIDA. The center initially focused on data that informed the technical community, but now also examines the economic and policy context that defines the internet ecosystem, including analysis related to infrastructure security and stability, the mutual interdependence of architecture and policy, and the ethics of information technology research.

Alan Edelman

IEEE Computer Society has selected Alan Edelman as the winner of the Sidney Fernbach Award. Edelman is co-creator of Julia, co-founder and chief scientist at Julia Computing, professor of applied mathematics at MIT and head of the Julia Lab at MIT. 

According to the Society, Edelman received the award “for outstanding breakthroughs in high-performance computing, linear algebra and computational science, and for contributions to the Julia programming language.” The award consists of a certificate and a $2,000 honorarium, and it will be presented to Edelman at the SC19 conference in November.

Amir Faintuch

GLOBALFOUNDRIES has announced the appointment of Amir Faintuch as senior vice president and general manager of the company’s computing and wired infrastructure and strategic business unit. Faintuch has held senior management and executive leadership roles at Intel, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.

“This is a new era of ‘The Renaissance of Compute’, where the rise of silicon architecture is complemented by silicon processes and will drive new compute engines and emerging workloads,” said Faintuch. “I am excited to join GF to help drive this market transformation by leveraging GF’s specialized applications solutions that will enable its clients to differentiate and win in the market.”

Ian Foster

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science (SC) has named Ian Foster a 2019 SC Distinguished Scientist Fellow. Foster, the director of Argonne National Laboratory’s Data Science and Learning Division and a professor of computer science at the University of Chicago, received the award for “pioneering work in distributed and high-performance computing with fundamental and long-lasting impacts on both computer science as a discipline and the practice of computing across the Office of Science.”

“This recognition of Argonne’s exceptional computer science program and culture, and the work of my many collaborators over many years, is extremely gratifying,” Foster said. ​“I am excited to be able to use this support to pursue new research directions at the intersection of artificial intelligence and science.”

Geoffrey C. Fox

The Association for Computing Machinery and IEEE Computer Society have named Geoffrey C. Fox of Indiana University Bloomington as the recipient of the 2019 ACM-EEE CS Ken Kennedy Award. Fox was cited for foundational contributions to parallel computing methodology, algorithms and software, and data analysis, and their interfaces with broad classes of applications.

Fox is director of the Digital Science Center and associate dean for Research and Graduate Studies at the Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing, and a professor of informatics and computing and physics at Indiana University Bloomington. He is principal investigator of FutureGrid, a new cyberinfrastructure test to enable new scientific computing approaches. He has more than 1,200 publications in physics and computer science.

James Hetherington

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has appointed James Hetherington as its new director of e-infrastructure. Hetherington, who has a PhD in computational particle physics from Cambridge, has held roles at University College London, the Alan Turing Institute, the UK Association of Research Software Engineers and more.

Mark Thomson, executive chair of the Science and Technology Facilities Council, said “James comes to UKRI with a wealth of experience and a strong history of working across research council boundaries. We are delighted that he has decided to join us at this exciting time; his experience and deep knowledge will help us drive UKRI’s e-Infrastructure roadmap forward.”

Jim Nicholas

Codeplay has announced that Jim Nicholas is its new chairman. Nicholas is currently CEO of Uniphy, and in the past has been CEO of MIPS, executive vice president at Imagination Technologies and senior leadership roles at ARM, ST-Ericsson and Frontier Smart Technologies. 

“I have known and admired Codeplay’s contributions to the industries that we’ve served for a long while,” Nicholas said. “I am honored to be given the opportunity to support Codeplay in achieving its ambitions. Codeplay has the technologies, great people and vision to ensure that its value and impact will become more profound and widespread.”

Necip Sayiner

Rambus Inc. has announced the appointment of Dr. Necip Sayiner to its board of directors.  Prior to joining the Rambus board, Sayiner was executive vice president and general manager at Renesas Electronics Corporation, following their acquisition of Intersil, where he served as president and CEO.

“Rambus is in the midst of executing a transformation of its business to a product-focused enterprise,” said Sayiner. “I look forward to working with the board and executive team to support the growing portfolio of high-performance leading-edge semiconductor solutions.”

Vinay Srinivas

Cerebras Systems has announced that Vinay Srinivas, former vice president of engineering at Synopsys, has joined Cerebras Systems as vice president of software engineering. Srinivas, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, has led software engineering at startups and Fortune 500 companies.

“Cerebras is an industry pioneer, and I look forward to helping the company achieve its quest to dominate in AI acceleration,” said Srinivas. “The Wafer Scale Engine is the result of fearless engineering, exceptional focus and tireless dedication to solving the problem of AI compute. I’m excited to join the Cerebras team and help define the future of AI—and to ensure that all of Cerebras’s solutions are simple to install, easy to use, and exceptionally flexible, all while delivering record breaking performance.”

Uwe Stelter

Atos has announced that Uwe Stelter has been appointed as its new chief financial officer. Stelter has been deputy CFO of the group since July, after holding COO roles in the Infrastructure and Data Management and Business and Platform divisions. Prior to that, he was CFO of the Infrastructure and Data Management division and of the North America Business Unit.

Stelter joined Atos in 2011 from Siemens, where he held multiple global finance management positions in the U.S. and Germany in the IT and Communication divisions. Stelter was also CFO of ProSTEP, a Germany-based consulting and software company serving the product lifecycle management market. He is a graduate of AKAD University in Germany.

2019 Distinguished ACM Members

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has named 62 Distinguished Members for outstanding contributions to the field. All 2019 inductees are longstanding ACM members and were selected by their peers for a range of accomplishments that have contributed to important technologies. “Each year it is our honor to select a new class of Distinguished Members,” explains ACM President Cherri M. Pancake. “Our overarching goal is to build a community wherein computing professionals can grow professionally and, in turn, contribute to the field and the broader society.” To see the full list of 2019 inductees, click here.


To read last month’s edition of Career Notes, click here.

Do you know someone that should be included in next month’s list? If so, send us an email at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion XL — were added to the benchmark suite as MLPerf continues Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire