Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award

In recognition of the evolution of high-performance computing systems

Established in late 1997. A crystal memento, illuminated certificate, and $10,000 honorarium are awarded to recognize innovative contributions to high-performance computing systems that best exemplify the creative spirit demonstrated by Seymour Cray.

In recognition of the evolution of high-performance computing systems, awardees may 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.

Funding for the Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award is available through an IEEE Foundation fund, which was fully endowed through a partnership between the IEEE Computer Society and HPE. Thanks to the generous support of HPE, the endowment enables permanent funding for the award.

The award nomination requires a minimum of 3 endorsements by the award deadline.

Review Nomination Questions (pdf) | Self- nominations will not be accepted. Read Policies & Procedures

2025 Presentation Dates at SC25 St. Louis, Missouri

Presentation: Tuesday, 18 November 2025
Recipient Keynote: Wednesday, 19 November 2025

2025 Seymour Cray Subcommittee Chair

Satoshi Matsuoka

RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS)

Past Recipients

2025 John Shalf: For for leadership in HPC and work co-designing energy efficient HPC hardware and software.
2024 Norman P. Jouppi: For the design and deployment of special-purpose supercomputers for artificial intelligence.
2022 Satoshi Matsuoka: For long-term global leadership in supercomputing system design, such as TSUBAME and Fugaku.
2019 David B. Kirk: For outstanding leadership in developing GPU computing and in engendering its rise to the mainstream of HPC.
2018 David Shaw: For the design of special-purpose supercomputers for biomolecular simulations.
2016 William Camp: For visionary leadership of the Red Storm project, and for decades of leadership of the HPC community.
2015 Mateo Valero: In recognition of seminal contributions to vector, out-of-order, multithreaded, and VLIW architectures.
2014 Gordon Bell: For his exceptional contributions in designing and bringing several computer systems to market that changed the world of high performance computing and of computing in general, the two most important of these being the PDP-6 and the VAX-11/780.
2013 Marc Snir: For contributions to the research, development, theory, and standardization of high-performance parallel computing including the IBM RS/6000 SP and Blue Gene systems.
2012 Peter M. Kogge: For innovations in advanced computer architecture and systems.
2011 Charles L. Seitz: For innovations in high-performance message passing architectures and networks.
2010 Alan Gara: For innovations in low power, densely packaged supercomputing systems.
2009 Kenichi Miura: For leadership in developing groundbreaking vector supercomputing hardware and software.
2008 Steve Wallach: For contribution to high-performance computing through design of innovative vector and parallel computing systems, notably the Convex mini-supercomputer series, a distinguished industrial career and acts of public service.
2007 Kenneth E. Batcher: For fundamental theoretical and practical contributions to massively parallel computation, including parallel sorting algorithms, interconnection networks, and pioneering designs, of the STARAN and MPP computers.
2006 Tadashi Watanabe: For serving as lead designer of the NEC SX series of supercomputers, and especially for the design of the Earth Simulator, which was the world's fastest supercomputer from 2002 to 2004.
2005 Steven L. Scott: For advancing supercomputer architecture through the development of the Cray T3E, the Cray X-1 and the Cray "Black Widow".
2004 William J. Dally: For fundamental contributions to the design and engineering of high-performance interconnection networks, parallel computer architectures, and high-speed signaling technology.
2003 Burton J. Smith: For ingenious and sustained contributions to designs and implementations at the frontier of high performance computing and especially for sustained championing of the use of multithreading to enable parallel execution and overcome latency and to achieve high performance in industrially significant products.
2002 Monty M. Denneau: For ingenious and sustained contributions to designs and implementations at the frontier of high performance computing leading to widely used industrial products.
2001 John L. Hennessy: For pioneering contributions to the foundation, teaching, and practice of high performance computing, especially in distributed shared memory multiprocessor architectures and in design and application of reduced instruction set architectures.
2000 Glen J. Culler: For pioneering contributions to the foundation and practice of high performance computing in array and very long instruction word (VLIW) processing especially for use in interactive scientific exploration.
1999 John Cocke: For unique and creative contributions to the computer industry through innovative high performance system designs.