ACADEMIA

NEC Corporation announced that Project Leader at the Next Generation Supercomputer R & D Center, RIKEN, Dr. Tadashi Watanabe (previous employee and Vice President at NEC Corporation), will be honored with the Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award from the IEEE Computer Society. Dr.. Watanabe will be the first Japanese individual to receive this award. The award ceremony is to take place on November 15 during the Supercomputing 2006 conference that is being held from November 11 to 17 in Tampa, Florida, U.S.A. The Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award was established in 1997 and is given to individuals whose innovative contributions to high performance computing systems best exemplify the creative spirit demonstrated by Seymour Cray, inventor of the vector supercomputer concept and developer of several successful supercomputers. Dr. Tadashi Watanabe joined NEC Corporation in 1968 and was engaged in the development of large-scale computers until December, 2005, when he left NEC for his new appointment. In particular, it is worth noting that he was the chief designer of SX-2, the first supercomputer introduced by NEC in 1983, which boasted the world's fastest speed at the time. Dr. Watanabe already received the IEEE Eckert-Mauchly award from the IEEE Computer Society and ACM ( Association for Computing Machinery ) for his contribution to the NEC SX Series in 1998. Furthermore, Dr. Watanabe played a central role in the successive development of the SX Series and "the Earth Simulator". The Earth Simulator was certified as the world's fastest supercomputer for three years running from 2002 to 2004. NEC's SX Series and the Earth Simulator both employ the vector principle that was invented by Seymour Cray. Previous recipients of the Seymour Cray Award include John Cocke of IBM Corporation, Steve Scott of Cray Inc. and Burton J. Smith of Microsoft Corporation. NEC believes that this award honors Dr. Watanabe through global recognition of his high technological capabilities and NEC's vector supercomputing technology. As a world-leading vendor, NEC will continue to target provision of the best computer solutions through the development of leading-edge technology and products.