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PARALLEL COMPUTING PIONEERS
David J. Kuck
Founder and Chairman of the Board, Kuck and Associates, Inc.
David J. Kuck has forged new ground in the development of parallel
computation from the time he first became involved in the field more
than three decades ago. Kuck is considered the founder of parallelizing
compilers, and has made other major contributions to the field of
parallel computation during his long and distinguished career as a
researcher, professor, software company founder, and product developer.
"Initially, I became interested in parallel computing as an advanced
research topic," says Kuck. "Over the years, I became more convinced
that the eventual limits of sequential hardware would require
parallelism in architectures. Today, the need for practical parallelism
is a reality, and better software is an urgent need that I am trying to
satisfy."
Kuck received his B.S.E.E. at the University of Michigan (1959), and his
M.S. and Ph.D. in engineering at Northwestern University (1960 and
1963). He was a Ford Postdoctoral Fellow and assistant professor of
electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
before joining the University of Illinois Department of Computer Science
as assistant professor in 1965. In 1986, Kuck moved to the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering as a professor. He served as the
director of the Center for Supercomputing Research and Development
(CSRD) from 1984 to 1992. In 1993, Kuck left the university to work
full-time at Kuck and Associates, Inc. (KAI), an optimization software
company he founded in 1979.
While at CSRD, Kuck was closely involved in the development of Cedar, a
system built to demonstrate that scalable SMP parallel processing is
practical across a wide range of applications. Efforts were concentrated
on developing effective methods of sharing memory and parallel
interconnection networks, as well as parallel languages, programming
environments, and restructuring compiler and operating system issues. In
1969, Kuck initiated work on the Parafrase system, a
vectorizing/parallelizing compiler implemented as a source-to-source
code restructurer. In 1979, he and his collaborators at KAI developed
KAP, a software tool that makes Fortran and C programs run faster. KAP
is targeted at Fortran and C compilers to automatically optimize user
code, producing the fastest code possible for cache-based workstations
and PCs, parallel systems, and other advanced architecture computers. In
addition, Kuck has developed other systems at the CSRD and at the
companies and organizations he has consulted with throughout his career,
including Burroughs, Alliant, Sequent, Univac, and IBM.
Kuck's current research and development activities at KAI include
research in delivering practical parallelism, development of parallel
software engineering techniques, and development of restructuring
compilers for high-performance sequential and parallel systems. He is
also developing advanced software for performance analysis and
improvement, and promoting open performance systems and computational
science and engineering. "Today, tools are needed to enable applications
experts to exploit parallel systems without becoming computer experts,"
says Kuck. "KAI has developed the KAP/Pro Toolset to provide a parallel
software engineering discipline for those people. My hope is that these
programmers will be able to provide practical parallel applications for
end users of many types."
Kuck's latest book, High Performance Computing: Challenges for Future
Generations, has recently been released by Oxford University Press. He
is also author of the book, Structure of Computers and Computations, and
serves or has served as editor or editorial board member of 13 technical
journals. Kuck has received numerous awards throughout his career,
including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Emanual R. Piore Award (1987), Alumni Merit Award for Northwestern
University (1989), and Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)-IEEE
Eckert-Mauchly Award (1993). He is a fellow of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, ACM, and IEEE, and a member of the
National Academy of Engineering.
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