Anant Agarwal is an Indian
computer architecture researcher. He is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...
(MIT), where he led the development of
Alewife, an early
cache coherent multiprocessor
Multiprocessing (MP) is the use of two or more central processing units (CPUs) within a single computer system. The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one processor or the ability to allocate tasks between them. The ...
, and has been director of the
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Lab ...
. He is the founder and CTO of
Tilera, a
fabless
Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclu ...
semiconductor
A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...
company focusing on scalable multicore embedded
processor design.
He is the CEO of
edX
edX is an American For-profit higher education in the United States, for-profit
massive open online course provider. It was founded by MIT and Harvard. It is a subsidiary of 2U (company), 2U.
History
edX was founded in May 2012 by the admi ...
, a joint partnership between MIT and
Harvard University
Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
that offers free online learning.
Education
Agarwal was born in Mangalore and did his schooling in
St. Aloysius Mangalore. He holds a bachelor's degree (1982) in electrical engineering from
Indian Institute of Technology Madras. For postgraduate study, he attended
Stanford University
Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
, where he received an MS (1984) and a PhD (1987), both in electrical engineering.
His PhD thesis, ''Analysis of Cache Performance for Operating Systems and Multiprogramming'', was written under
John L. Hennessy.
Career
Agarwal is the CEO of
edX
edX is an American For-profit higher education in the United States, for-profit
massive open online course provider. It was founded by MIT and Harvard. It is a subsidiary of 2U (company), 2U.
History
edX was founded in May 2012 by the admi ...
, a worldwide, online learning initiative of MIT and Harvard. He is a leader of the Carbon Project, which is developing new scalable multicore architectures, a new operating system for multicore and clouds called fos, and a distributed, parallel simulator for multicore and clouds called Graphite. He is a leader of the Angstrom Project, which is creating fundamental technologies for exascale computing. He contributes to WebSim, a web-based electronic circuits laboratory. He led the Raw Project at CSAIL, and is a founder of Tilera Corporation. Raw was an early tiled multicore processor with 16 cores. He also teaches the edX offering of MIT's 6.002 Circuits and Electronics.
In 2013, he was elected as a member into 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 ...
for contributions to shared-memory and multicore computer architectures.
His previous projects include Sparcle, a coarse-grain multithreaded (CGMT or switch-on-event SOE) microprocessor, Alewife, a scalable distributed shared memory multiprocessor, Virtual Wires, a scalable FPGA-based logic emulation system, LOUD, a beamforming microphone array, Oxygen, a pervasive human-centered computing project, and Fugu, a protected, multiuser multiprocessor.
Awards
Agarwal received the 2001 Maurice Wilkes Award for computer architecture.
In 2007 he was inducted 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 membe ...
. In 2011 he was appointed Director of MIT's
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. In 2013, he became 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 ...
and was appointed the CEO of EdX. In March 2016, he was awarded the
Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education in higher education as an outstanding leader of the development of the Massive Open Online Course movement. In addition to that, he is also a Distinguished Alumnus of IIT Madras. He received Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in the Republic of India in 2017. In 2018, he received the
Yidan Prize for Education Research, the world's largest education award, i.e. USD four million.
Publications
*
References
External links
*
*
*
"Why massive open online courses (still) matter" (TED2013)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Agarwal, Anant
MIT School of Engineering faculty
2007 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
Indian Institutes of Technology alumni
Living people
Scientists from Mangalore
Stanford University School of Engineering alumni
1959 births
Maurice Wilkes Award winners
Yidan Prize laureates
Recipients of the Padma Shri in literature and education