IEEE CS Announces Norman P. Jouppi as 2024 Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award Recipient

The Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award, one of IEEE CS’ highest honors, recognizes innovative contributions to high-performance computing systems that best exemplify the creative spirit demonstrated by field pioneer Seymour Cray, also known as the “father of supercomputing.” Each year, the award is bestowed upon a deserving individual who serves as a present-day visionary, making a lasting impact on the field. In 2024, IEEE CS honored Norman P. Jouppi for his design and deployment of special-purpose supercomputers for artificial intelligence.

Today, Jouppi is recognized widely as the most influential hardware architect of his generation. His extensive and diverse experience in hardware design, spanning several leading companies and multiple innovative projects, has positioned him as a visionary in computer engineering.

Jouppi's early work established him as a leading figure in computer architecture. His innovations, such as stream buffers and victim caches, are now widely adopted in commercial microprocessors. He played a pivotal role in characterizing cache access times and evaluating cache organizations holistically, a crucial step forward in optimizing system performance. These contributions were recognized with the ACM/IEEE CS Eckert-Mauchly Award, the highest honor in computer architecture, and his election to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. He also received the IEEE CS Harry H. Goode Memorial Award.

But his work at Google, where he now serves as a Google Fellow, might be his most ground-breaking to date. Upon joining Google in 2013, he spearheaded the development of the first Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), a domain-specific architecture specifically designed for Machine Learning (ML), featuring a massive number of arithmetic units within a manageable power envelope – a revolution in ML hardware at the time.

The first TPU delivered much faster performance than contemporary GPUs and CPUs, with a cost-performance advantage of 30-80x. The breakthrough not only accelerated Google's own ML advancements but also spurred additional investment and advances in ML for the broader IT industry. To address ongoing challenges and further enhance performance, Jouppi developed subsequent versions of the TPU, featuring scaled performance, the first purpose-built training chip, a custom interconnect and a novel floating-point format that is now adopted by all major microprocessor makers, and more.

The TPU supercomputers developed under Jouppi's guidance represent a quantum leap in computational efficiency and performance. These technological breakthroughs have revolutionized the field of ML. His leadership and vision have ensured that ML can be pursued in a sustainable way, shaping the course of Artificial Intelligence research and innovation for generations to come.

"This year’s award recognizes Dr. Norm Jouppi’s more recent work on special-purpose AI systems, but he has a long and distinguished record of innovation in high-performance processors, memory hierarchies, and storage systems,” said Mary Hall, University of Utah Kahlert School of Computing, IEEE Fellow, and Chair of this year’s Selection Committee. “Dr. Jouppi is an excellent representative from our community with contributions consistent with those of the award’s namesake. We are honored to recognize him as the 2024 Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award recipient and celebrate his impact on the field.”

IEEE CS will formally recognize Jouppi as a 2024 Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award recipient at SC24, taking place 17- 22 November in Atlanta, GA. During the opening session on 19 November, Jouppi will be presented with a crystal memento, certificate, and a $10,000 honorarium.

Established in 1997, the Seymour Cray Computer Engineering 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. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has endowed the award to honor its winners in perpetuity. With a 100% match by IEEE CS, the organization will be able annually to provide recipients of the award with a crystal memento, certificate, and $10,000 honorarium.

As a 2024 recipient of the Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award, Jouppi 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.

Learn more information about the Seymour Cray Engineering Award that will be presented at SC24.