Steven "Steve" J. Wallach (born September 1945 in

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

, New York) is an engineer, consultant and technology manager. He is a

Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award The Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award, also known as the Seymour Cray Award, is an award given by the IEEE Computer Society, to recognize significant and innovative contributions in the field of supercomputer, high-performance computing. The ...

recipient.

Education

Wallach received his BS in

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

from Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, his MS in electrical engineering, from

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

and an MBA from

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. BU was founded in 1839 by a group of Boston Methodism, Methodists with its original campus in Newbury (town), Vermont, Newbur ...

Career

Wallach retired from Micron, and is currently a guest scientist at LANL (Los Alamos). He is also a visiting scientist at the Barcelona Supercomputer Center (BSC). Main focus on HPC RISC-V technology. Wallach was the co-founder and CTO of Convey Computers. After Micron Technology bought Convey, Wallach became a design director. Wallach was previously Vice President of technology for Chiaro Networks and was co-founder of

Convex Computer Convex Computer Corporation was a company that developed, manufactured and marketed vector minisupercomputers and supercomputers for small-to-medium-sized businesses. Their later Exemplar series of parallel computing machines were based on the He ...

, their Chief Technology Officer and Senior V.P. of Development. After

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

bought Convex, Wallach became the chief technology officer of Hewlett-Packard's large systems group. He was also a visiting professor at

Rice University William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University, is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas, United States. Established in 1912, the university spans 300 acres. Rice University comp ...

from 1998–1999. Prior to Convex, he was manager of Advanced Development for

Data General Data General Corporation was an early minicomputer firm formed in 1968. Three of the four founders were former employees of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Their first product, 1969's Data General Nova, was a 16-bit minicomputer intended to ...

. His efforts on the MV/8000 are chronicled in

Tracy Kidder John Tracy Kidder (born November 12, 1945) is an American writer of nonfiction books. He received the Pulitzer Prize for his '' The Soul of a New Machine'' (1981), about the creation of a new computer at Data General Corporation. He has recei ...

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...

winner ''

The Soul of a New Machine ''The Soul of a New Machine'' is a nonfiction book written by Tracy Kidder and published in 1981. It chronicles the experiences of a computer engineering team racing to design a next-generation computer at a blistering pace under tremendous pr ...

''. Prior to that, he was an engineer at

Raytheon Raytheon is a business unit of RTX Corporation and is a major U.S. defense contractor and industrial corporation with manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. Founded in 1922, it merged in 2020 with Unite ...

, where he worked on the All Applications Digital Computer (AADC). Wallach has 96 american patents and is a member of the

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

, a

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 ...

Fellow and was a founding member of PITAC (The Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee). He is currently an adviser to Centerpoint Venture partners,

Sevin Rosen Funds Sevin Rosen Funds (SRF) is a Texas-based venture capital firm credited with pioneering the personal computing revolution in the 1980s and also venture investing in Dallas. It was established in 1981 by L. J. Sevin, a former Texas Instruments engi ...

, and Interwest, and a consultant to the

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and energy production, the research and development of nuclear power, the military's nuclear w ...

Advanced Scientific Computing (ASC) program at

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development Laboratory, laboratories of the United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, United States Department of Energy ...

. He donated his personally library of papers, engineering note books, to the Computer Museum. In 2023 he was interviewed by the ACM History Committee

Awards

Wallach was awarded in 2008 Seymour Cray Computer Science and Engineering Award for his "contribution to high-performance computing through the design of innovative vector and

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

systems, notably the Convex mini-supercomputer series, a distinguished industrial career and acts of public service." In 2002 he received the IEEE Computer Society Charles Babbage Award. Member Eta Kappa Nu & Tau Beta Pi. In 2024 he was named as one of the HPC legends.

References

External links

The New York Times, November 16, 2008: A Computing Pioneer Has a New Idea
by John Markoff.

by John Markoff. * ttps://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.12/soul.html Wired article revisiting "''The Soul of a New Machine''" and the team after twenty years* https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8s187kj/ * https://www.hpcwire.com/35-hpc-legends-steve-wallach/ {{DEFAULTSORT:Wallach, Steve 1945 births Living people American consultants Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award recipients University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni Boston University School of Management alumni Rice University staff American chief technology officers Polytechnic Institute of New York University alumni