Kunle Olukotun

Kunle Olukotun, Cadence Design Systems Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University, is celebrated as a pioneer in multicore processor design and leader of the Stanford Hydra chip multiprocessor research project. His career milestones include founding Afara Websystems in 2000 to develop efficient multicore processors for server systems. The company was later acquired by Sun Microsystems, with its Niagara multicore processor now powering all Oracle SPARC-based servers.

In 2018, Kunle co-founded SambaNova Systems, serving as Chief Technologist. The company, which recently raised $150M in Series B funding led by Intel Capital, focuses on creating high-performance machine learning and big data analytics platforms based on AI processors.

At Stanford, Kunle directs the Pervasive Parallelism Lab (PPL) and is a member of the Data Analytics for What’s Next (DAWN) Lab. Both labs are driving forces in the advancement of machine learning infrastructure. Kunle, an ACM Fellow and IEEE Fellow, has made significant contributions to multiprocessors on a chip and multi-threaded processor design. He obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from The University of Michigan and is originally from London.