Kurt Keutzer (born November 9, 1955) is an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

Early life and education

Kurt Keutzer grew up in

Indianapolis, Indiana Indianapolis ( ), colloquially known as Indy, is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Indiana, most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana, Marion ...

. He earned a

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Medieval Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six years ...

in mathematics from

Maharishi University of Management Maharishi International University (MIU), formerly Maharishi University of Management, is a private university in Fairfield, Iowa, United States. It was founded in 1971 by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and practices a "consciousness-based education" syst ...

(formerly Mararishi International University) in 1978, and a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

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

from

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, IUB, or Indiana) is a public university, public research university in Bloomington, Indiana, United States. It is the flagship university, flagship campus of Indiana Univer ...

in 1984.

Career

Keutzer joined

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

in 1984, where he worked on

logic synthesis In computer engineering, logic synthesis is a process by which an abstract specification of desired circuit behavior, typically at register transfer level (RTL), is turned into a design implementation in terms of logic gates, typically by a co ...

. In 1991, he joined the

electronic design automation Electronic design automation (EDA), also referred to as electronic computer-aided design (ECAD), is a category of software tools for designing Electronics, electronic systems such as integrated circuits and printed circuit boards. The tools wo ...

company

Synopsys Synopsys, Inc. is an American electronic design automation (EDA) company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that focuses on silicon design and verification, silicon intellectual property and software security and quality. Synopsys sup ...

, where he was promoted to chief technology officer. He subsequently joined the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

as a professor in 1998. His research at Berkeley has focused on the intersection of

high performance computing High-performance computing (HPC) is the use of supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Overview HPC integrates systems administration (including network and security knowledge) and parallel programming into ...

and

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

. Working with a number of graduate students at Berkeley, Keutzer developed FireCaffe, which scaled the training of

deep neural networks Deep learning is a subset of machine learning that focuses on utilizing multilayered neural networks to perform tasks such as classification, regression, and representation learning. The field takes inspiration from biological neuroscience a ...

to over 100

GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...

s. Later, with LARS and LAMB optimizers, they scaled it to over 1000 servers. Keutzer and his students also developed deep neural networks such as

SqueezeNet SqueezeNet is a deep neural network for image classification released in 2016. SqueezeNet was developed by researchers at DeepScale, University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University. In designing SqueezeNet, the authors' goal was to cr ...

, SqueezeDet, and SqueezeSeg, which can run efficiently on mobile devices. Keutzer co-founded DeepScale with his PhD student Forrest Iandola in 2015, and Keutzer served as the company's

chief strategy officer A chief strategy officer (CSO) is an executive that usually reports to the CEO and has primary responsibility for strategy formulation and management, including developing the corporate vision and strategy, overseeing strategic planning, and leadi ...

. The firm was focused on developing deep neural networks for

advanced driver assistance systems Advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) are technologies that assist drivers with the safe operation of a vehicle. Through a human-machine interface, ADAS increases car and road safety. ADAS uses automated technology, such as sensors and came ...

in passenger cars. On October 1, 2019, electric vehicle manufacturer

Tesla, Inc. Tesla, Inc. ( or ) is an American multinational automotive and clean energy company. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, it designs, manufactures and sells battery electric vehicles (BEVs), stationary battery energy storage devices from h ...

purchased DeepScale to augment and accelerate its self-driving vehicle work.

Honors and awards

Keutzer was named a Fellow of the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

in 1996. Recipient of DAC Most Influential Paper (MIP) award (24th DAC, 1987) for his "Dagon: technology binding and local optimization by DAG matching” publication.

Books by Keutzer

*1988. Dwight Hill, Don Shugard, John Fishburn, and Kurt Keutzer. ''Algorithms and Techniques for VLSI Layout Synthesis''.

Springer Springer or springers may refer to: Publishers * Springer Science+Business Media, aka Springer International Publishing, a worldwide publishing group founded in 1842 in Germany formerly known as Springer-Verlag. ** Springer Nature, a multinationa ...

. *1994. Srinivas Devadas, Abhijit Ghosh, and Kurt Keutzer. ''Logic Synthesis''.

McGraw-Hill McGraw Hill is an American education science company that provides educational content, software, and services for students and educators across various levels—from K-12 to higher education and professional settings. They produce textbooks, ...

. *2002. David Chinnery and Kurt Keutzer. ''Closing the Gap Between ASIC & Custom: Tools and Techniques for High-Performance ASIC Design''. Springer. (2nd edition appeared in 2007.) *2004. Pinhong Chen, Desmond A. Kirkpatrick, and Kurt Keutzer. ''Static Crosstalk-Noise Analysis: For Deep Sub-Micron Digital Designs''. Springer. *2005. Matthias Gries and Kurt Keutzer. ''Building ASIPs: The Mescal Methodology''. Springer.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Keutzer, Kurt 1955 births Living people 20th-century American businesspeople 20th-century American scientists 21st-century American scientists 21st-century American businesspeople American computer scientists Scientists at Bell Labs Machine learning researchers Indiana University Bloomington alumni Fellows of the IEEE UC Berkeley College of Engineering faculty American technology company founders American chief technology officers