Intel Profiles Supercomputer Architect Alan Gara

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300x200xblog-post-300x200.jpg.pagespeed.ic.xeurGnIWyYThe Intel Blog is featuring profile of Alan Gara, who has designed and built dozens of world-beating supercomputers. 

Aurora, which will be at least four times as capable as today’s top supercomputer, stands on top a mountain of Gara-designed machines. Before joining Intel, Gara was an IBM Fellow and chief architect of three generations of IBM’s Blue Gene series. If you look at the list of the world’s top 10 supercomputers over the last 10 years—100 machines in total—you’ll discover Gara was the lead architect for more than a third of them. Why come to Intel after such a run? “One of the things was to really find a place where we could have a broader impact than just the very top end of HPC, which is what IBM was doing,” Gara notes. “The bulk of the HPC market was still being driven by Intel processors. If I wanted to be where the action was going to be, Intel was the place to be.” For the first time since 1997, Intel is the “prime” contractor on Aurora—we signed a $200 million deal to deliver the entire system and its software, built in partnership with Cray, a top supercomputing OEM.

In this video, Alan Gara talks about new architectural directions and the power of integration.

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