As part of its mission, the IEEE Computer Society (CS) honors the achievements of the global computer and engineering community through its awards programs, and leading organizations recognize these awards as industry gold standards. To further that cause, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) will provide a $175,000 endowment to maintain the Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award and honor its winners in perpetuity, ensuring the IEEE CS’s Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award will continue to be a distinction for leaders in high-performance computing (HPC).
The endowment from HPE will be matched 100% by IEEE CS, ensuring the organization will be able to annually provide recipients of the award with a crystal memento, certificate, and $10,000 honorarium.
“Recognizing distinguished and impactful contributions to the computing profession is core to who we are and what we do at the Computer Society,” said Jyotika Athavale, 2024 IEEE CS President. “And being able to continue the tradition of the Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award, which honors one of the most influential engineers of the modern era, is incredible. We sincerely thank HPE for their generous donation to help keep the spirit of Seymour Cray alive and celebrate his influence within high-performance computing in the next generation of engineers driving the industry forward.”
Established in 1997, the Seymour Cray Award recognizes innovative contributions to HPC systems that best exemplify the creative spirit demonstrated by field pioneer Seymour Cray. In support of the evolution of HPC systems, awardees may also be recognized for technologies that have contributed to a working machine deployed at scale, which has had long-term impact valued by the HPC community.
“We are honored to play an important role in ensuring that the Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award will forever be part of the distinctions awarded by the IEEE Computer Society,” said Trish Damkroger, Senior Vice President and General Manager, HPC & AI Infrastructure Solutions, HPE. “Knowing the important contributions the HPC community makes to science and engineering, we celebrate all the scientists, researchers, and engineers pushing the boundaries of HPC with this award, which further underscores the hard work that continues to drive organizations and industries forward.”
Seymour Cray was a U.S. electrical engineer and supercomputer architect who designed a series of computers that were the fastest in the world for decades and founded the company Cray Research, which would build many of these machines. Called “the father of supercomputing,” Cray has been credited with creating the supercomputer industry through his efforts.
The 2024 Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award recipient(s) will be announced at SC24, taking place November 17-22, in Atlanta. This year’s awardee(s) will join a prestigious group of previous winners including, Satoshi Matsuoka (2022), recognized for long-term global leadership in supercomputing system design, such as TSUBAME and Fugaku; David B. Kirk (2019) noted for outstanding leadership in developing GPU computing and in engendering its rise to the mainstream of HPC; and David Shaw (2018) honored for the design of special-purpose supercomputers for biomolecular simulations, among others.
For more information about the Seymour Cray Engineering Award, visit https://www.computer.org/volunteering/awards/cray. To learn more about SC24, visit https://sc24.supercomputing.org/.
