2010 Eckert-Mauchly Award

acm
The Association for Computing Machinery
Advancing Computing as a Science & Profession

Contact: Virginia Gold
212-626-0505
[email protected]
 

Dally Pioneered Stream Architecture to Improve Image, Video, and Digital Signal Processing

 

New York, May 12, 2010 -- The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the IEEE Computer Society (IEEE-CS) will jointly present the Eckert-Mauchly Award to William J. Dally of NVIDIA Corp. for his innovative contributions to the architecture of interconnection networks and parallel computers.  The Eckert Mauchly Award www.computer.org/portal/web/awards/Eckert http://awards.acm.org/eckert_mauchly is known as the computer architecture community’s most prestigious award.  Dally developed the system and network architecture, signaling, routing, and synchronization technology that is found in most large parallel computers today. He also introduced the Imagine processor, which employs stream processing architecture, providing high- performance computing with power, speed, and efficiency.  Dally will receive the 2010 Eckert-Mauchly Award at the International Symposium on Computer Architecture http://isca2010.inria.fr/ which runs from June 19-23, in Saint-Malo, France.  

Early in his career, Dally recognized the limitations of serial or sequential processing to cope with the increasing need for processing power in order to solve complex computational problems.  He perceived the ability of parallel processing, in which many processing cores, each optimized for efficiency, can work together to solve a problem.  Historically, parallel processing architecture was used to model difficult scientific engineering problems in environmental science, biotechnology and genetics as well as geology and seismology.  Today, strong commercial demands provide a driving force for parallel processing applications in data mining, oil exploration, Web search engines, medical imaging and diagnosis, pharmaceutical design, and financial and economic modeling.  Parallel processing also enables continued scaling of computing performance in the current energy-constrained environment.           

Dally joined NVIDIA in 2009 as Chief Scientist and Senior Vice President of Research.  From 2005-2009, he served as chair of Stanford University’s Computer Science Department, where he has been a computer science professor since 1997.  Prior to his Stanford affiliation, Dally led a group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that built the J-Machine and the M-Machine, parallel machines that pioneered the separation of mechanism from programming models. Previously at California Institute of Technology, he designed the MOSSIM Simulation Engine to provide the computing power required to verify complex Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) chips.  He also designed the Torus Routing chip, a self-timed chip that reduces the latency of communications that traverse more than one channel. 

A co-founder of Velio Communications and Stream Processor, Inc., Dally has published more than 200 papers and holds over 75 issued patents.  He is the author of two textbooks, Digital Systems Engineering and Principles and Practices of Interconnection Networks.  A Fellow of ACM http://fellows.acm.org/, IEEE, http://www.ieee.org/membership_services/membership/fellows/index.html and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he received the 2000 ACM Maurice Wilkes award and the 2004 IEEE Computer Society Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award.  Dally received a B.S. degree from the Virginia Institute of Technology and an M.S. from Stanford, both in electrical engineering.  His Ph.D. in computer science is from Caltech

ACM and the IEEE Computer Society co-sponsor the Eckert-Mauchly Award, which was initiated in 1979.  It recognizes contributions to computer and digital systems architecture and comes with a $5,000 prize.  The award was named for John Presper Eckert and John William Mauchly, who collaborated on the design and construction of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC),  the first large scale electronic computing machine, which was completed in 1947. 

About ACM

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery www.acm.org, unites computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field’s challenges. ACM strengthens the computing profession’s collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.   

About the IEEE Computer Society

Founded in 1946, and the largest of IEEE’s 38 societies, the IEEE Computer Society www.computer.org is dedicated to advancing the theory and application of computing and information technology. The Computer Society serves the information and career-development needs of today’s computing researchers and professionals with books, conferences, conference publications, magazines, online courses, software development certifications, standards, and technical journals. Known worldwide for its computer-standards activities, the Computer Society promotes an active exchange of ideas and technological innovation.