Oyekunle Ayinde "Kunle" Olukotun is a British-born Nigerian computer scientist who is the Cadence Design Systems Professor of the

Stanford School of Engineering Stanford University School of Engineering is one of the schools of Stanford University. The current dean is Jennifer Widom, the former senior associate dean of faculty affairs and computer science chair. She is the school's 10th dean. List of de ...

, Professor of

Electrical Engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

and

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

and the director of the Stanford Pervasive Parallelism Lab. Olukotun is known as the “father of the

multi-core processor A multi-core processor is a microprocessor on a single integrated circuit with two or more separate processing units, called cores, each of which reads and executes program instructions. The instructions are ordinary CPU instructions (such a ...

”, and the leader of the Stanford Hydra Chip Multiprocessor research project. Olukotun's achievements include designing the first general-purpose multi-core CPU, innovating single-chip multiprocessor and

multi-threaded In computer science, a thread of execution is the smallest sequence of programmed instructions that can be managed independently by a scheduler, which is typically a part of the operating system. The implementation of threads and processes dif ...

processor design, and pioneering multicore

CPUs A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, and ...

and

GPUs A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobil ...

transactional memory In computer science and engineering, transactional memory attempts to simplify concurrent programming by allowing a group of load and store instructions to execute in an atomic way. It is a concurrency control mechanism analogous to database transa ...

technology and

domain-specific language A domain-specific language (DSL) is a computer language specialized to a particular application domain. This is in contrast to a general-purpose language (GPL), which is broadly applicable across domains. There are a wide variety of DSLs, ranging f ...

s programming models. Olukotun's research interests include

computer architecture In computer engineering, computer architecture is a description of the structure of a computer system made from component parts. It can sometimes be a high-level description that ignores details of the implementation. At a more detailed level, t ...

parallel programming Parallel computing is a type of computation in which many calculations or processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time. There are several different for ...

environments and scalable parallel systems, domain specific languages and high-level compilers.

Education

Olukotun did his undergraduate studies at

Calvin College Calvin University, formerly Calvin College, is a private Christian university in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Founded in 1876, Calvin University is an educational institution of the Christian Reformed Church and stands in the Reformed (Calvinist) ...

, in

Grand Rapids Grand Rapids is a city and county seat of Kent County in the U.S. state of Michigan. At the 2020 census, the city had a population of 198,917 which ranks it as the second most-populated city in the state after Detroit. Grand Rapids is the ...

, Michigan. He earned an MS (1987) and PhD (1991) from

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

, in Computer Science and Engineering. His advisor was Trevor Mudge.

Career

Olukotun joined Stanford's Department of Electrical Engineering in 1991. While at Stanford, Olukotun became the leader of the Stanford Hydra chip multiprocessor (CMP) research project which allowed for the development of multiprocessors with support for thread-level speculation. In 2000, he founded

Afara Websystems Afara Websystems Inc. was a Sunnyvale, California, USA server company whose goal was to build servers surrounding a custom high-throughput CPU architecture, "developing IP traffic management systems that will bring quality-of-service to the next gen ...

, a company that designed and manufactured high-throughput, low power processors for server systems with chip multiprocessor technology. Afara was purchased by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

in 2002. The Afara multicore processor Niagara, developed by Olukotun was acquired by Sun. Niagara derived processors currently power all

Oracle An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The word '' ...

SPARC SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture originally developed by Sun Microsystems. Its design was strongly influenced by the experimental Berkeley RISC system developed ...

-based servers and have generated billions of dollars of revenue. While at Sun, Olukotun was one of the architects of the 2005

UltraSPARC T1 Sun Microsystems' UltraSPARC T1 microprocessor, known until its 14 November 2005 announcement by its development codename "Niagara", is a multithreading, multicore CPU. Designed to lower the energy consumption of server computers, the CPU ty ...

processor. In 2017 Olukotun and Chris Ré founded SambaNova Systems. SambaNova Systems is developing a next-generation computing platform to power machine learning and data analytics. Olukotun now leads the Stanford Pervasive Parallelism Lab, which focuses on making heterogeneous parallel computing easy to use, and he is a member of the Data Analytics for What’s Next (DAWN) Lab, which is developing infrastructure for usable machine learning.

Research

Olukotun's research focus is in

, parallel programming environments and scalable parallel systems,

domain specific languages A domain-specific language (DSL) is a computer language specialized to a particular application domain. This is in contrast to a general-purpose language (GPL), which is broadly applicable across domains. There are a wide variety of DSLs, ranging ...

, and high-level compilers. Olukotun leads the Stanford Hydra chip multiprocessor (CMP) research project, revolutionizing computing by bringing multi-core technology to consumers and high-end computing systems. In the mid-1990s, Olukotun and his co-authors argued that multi-core computer processors were likely to make better use of hardware than existing

superscalar A superscalar processor is a CPU that implements a form of parallelism called instruction-level parallelism within a single processor. In contrast to a scalar processor, which can execute at most one single instruction per clock cycle, a sup ...

designs. In 2008, Olukotun returned to Stanford, and founded the Pervasive Parallelism Laboratory at Stanford after gathering US$6 million in funding from several computer-industry corporations. His recent work focuses on

domain-specific programming languages Domain specificity is a theoretical position in cognitive science (especially modern cognitive development) that argues that many aspects of cognition are supported by specialized, presumably evolutionarily specified, learning devices. The posit ...

that can allow algorithms to be easily adapted to multiple different types of parallel hardware including multi-core systems,

graphics processing unit A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobi ...

s, and

field-programmable gate array A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term '' field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware d ...

s. Olukotun is also a member of the board of advisors of UDC, a

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...

venture capital firm Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which hav ...

.About the company
UDC, retrieved 2011-04-01. He was elected as a Fellow of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

in 2006 for his "contributions to multiprocessors on a chip and multi threaded processor design".Oyekunle A Olukotun ACM Award Winner page
ACM, retrieved 2018-02-18. He became a Fellow of the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

in 2008. Olukotun has used several words from his Yoruba heritage in his research. Afara, the name of the company he founded, means "bridge" in the

Yoruba language Yoruba (, ; Yor. '; Ajami script, Ajami: ) is a language spoken in West Africa, primarily in South West (Nigeria), Southwestern Middle Belt, and Central Nigeria. It is spoken by the Ethnic group, ethnic Yoruba people. The number of Yoruba speake ...

, and he has named his server at Stanford

Ogun Ogun or Ogoun (Yoruba: Ògún, Portuguese: Ogum, Gu; also spelled Oggun or Ogou; known as Ogún or Ogum in Latin America) is a spirit that appears in several African religions. He attempted to seize the throne after the demise of Obatala, who re ...

after the Yoruba god of iron and steel, a play on words since large computers are frequently called

big iron "Big Iron" is a country ballad written and performed by Marty Robbins, originally released as an album track on ''Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs'' in September 1959, then as a single in February 1960 with the song "Saddle Tramp" as the B-si ...

. Olukotun directs the Stanford Pervasive Parallelism Lab (PPL) which seeks to proliferate the use of parallelism in all application areas. He is also a member of the Data Analytics for What's Next (DAWN) Lab. Olukotun holds 12 U.S. patents. He has published more than 150 scientific papers and wrote two textbooks.

Awards and honors

Eckert–Mauchly Award The Eckert–Mauchly Award recognizes contributions to digital systems and computer architecture. It is known as the computer architecture community’s most prestigious award. First awarded in 1979, it was named for John Presper Eckert and John ...

, 2023 * Member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...

, 2021 * IEEE Computer Society Harry H. Goode Award, 2018
IEEE Harry H. Goode Award * Michigan Engineering Alumni Merit Award, 2017
Michigan Engineering Alumni Merit Award, 2017 * ACM Fellow, 2006

Books

* S. W. Keckler, K. Olukotun, and H. P. Hofstee, ''Multicore Processors and Systems'' (Springer Publishing Company, Inc., 2009). * K. Olukotun, L. Hammond, J. Laudon, ''Chip Multiprocessor Architecture: Techniques to Improve Throughput and Latency, Synthesis Lectures on Computer Architecture'' (Morgan Claypool Publishers, 2007).

References

External links

Profile page at Stanford
*
Google Scholar
{{DEFAULTSORT:Olukotun, Kunle Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American inventors Calvin University alumni University of Michigan College of Engineering alumni Stanford University School of Engineering faculty Stanford University Department of Electrical Engineering faculty Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellow Members of the IEEE Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering American computer scientists Yoruba scientists American people of Yoruba descent American people of Nigerian descent Yoruba academics 21st-century American engineers Yoruba engineers Nigerian engineers Nigerian inventors Nigerian computer scientists