Boris Artashesovich Babayan (; ; born

Baku Baku (, ; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Azerbaijan, largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and in the Caucasus region. Baku is below sea level, which makes it the List of capital ci ...

, 20 December 1933) is a

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

and

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

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 ...

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian diaspora, Armenian communities around the ...

descent, notable as the pioneering creator of

supercomputer A supercomputer is a type of computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instruc ...

s in the former Soviet Union and Russia.

Biography

Babayan was born in

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

to an

family. He graduated from the

Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT; , also known as PhysTech), is a public university, public research university located in Moscow Oblast, Russia. It prepares specialists in theoretical physics, theoretical and applied physics, ...

in 1957. He completed his Ph.D. in 1964 and his doctorate of science in 1971. From 1956 to 1996, Babayan worked in the

Lebedev Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering Lebedev Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering (IPMCE) is a Russian research institution. It used to be a Soviet Academy of Sciences organization in Soviet times. The institute specializes itself in the development of: * Compute ...

, where he eventually became chief of the hardware and software division. Babayan and his team built their first computers during the 1950s. In the 1970s, being one of 15 deputies of chief architect V. S. Burtsev, he worked on the first

superscalar A superscalar processor (or multiple-issue processor) is a CPU that implements a form of parallelism called instruction-level parallelism within a single processor. In contrast to a scalar processor, which can execute at most one single in ...

computer, the Elbrus-1 and programming language

Эль-76 El-76 () is a high-level programming language developed in 1972–1973. The language was created for the Elbrus computer. Participants in the creation of the language were: Boris Babayan, V. M. Pentkovskii, S. V. Semenikhin, S. V. Veretennikov ...

. Using these computers in 1978, ten years before commercial applications appeared in the West, the

developed its missile systems and its nuclear and space programs. A team headed by Babayan designed Elbrus-3 computer using an architecture named

Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing Explicitly parallel instruction computing (EPIC) is a term coined in 1997 by the Itanium, HP–Intel alliance to describe a computing paradigm that researchers had been investigating since the early 1980s. This paradigm is also called ''Independe ...

(EPIC). From 1992 to 2004, Babayan held senior positions in the Moscow Center for SPARC Technology (MCST) and Elbrus International. In these roles he led the development of

Elbrus 2000 The Elbrus 2000 (or e2k; ) is a Russian 512-bit wide VLIW microprocessor developed by Moscow Center of SPARC Technologies (MCST) and fabricated by TSMC. It supports two instruction set architectures (ISA): Elbrus VLIW and Intel x86 (a compl ...

(single-chip implementation of Elbrus-3) and Elbrus90micro ( SPARC computer based on domestically developed microprocessor) projects. Since August 2004, Babayan is the Director of Architecture for the Software and Solutions Group in

Intel Corporation Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer components such as central processing ...

and scientific advisor of the Intel R&D center in

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

. He leads efforts in such areas as compilers, binary translation and security technologies. He became the second European holding the Intel Fellow title (after Norwegian, Tryggve Fossum). Babayan was awarded the two highest honors in the former Soviet Union: the

USSR State Prize The USSR State Prize () was one of the Soviet Union’s highest civilian honours, awarded from its establishment in September 1966 until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. It recognised outstanding contributions in the fields of science, mathem ...

for his achievements in 1974 in the field of computer-aided design, and the

Lenin Prize The Lenin Prize (, ) was one of the most prestigious awards of the Soviet Union for accomplishments relating to science, literature, arts, architecture, and technology. It was originally created on June 23, 1925, and awarded until 1934. During ...

in 1987 for the Elbrus-2 supercomputer design. Since 1984, he has been a corresponding member of the

USSR Academy of Sciences The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union was the highest scientific institution of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1991. It united the country's leading scientists and was subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (u ...

(later -

Russian Academy of Sciences The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation; and additional scientific and social units such ...

). He served as a professor at the

and held the Microprocessor Technology chair in Moscow based R&D center of

before his retirement in February 2022.

References

External links

Biography
Intel Fellow, Software and Solutions Group. Director, Architecture
Brief biography (in Russian)Babayan receives Intel Fellow title (in Russian)The Elbrus-2: a Soviet-era high performance computer
– history of the Elbrus project with an 18-minute video interview from the

Computer History Museum The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a computer museum in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the Information Age, and explores the Digital Revolution, computing revolution and its impact ...

oral history collection {{DEFAULTSORT:Babayan, Boris 1933 births Living people Engineers from Baku Computer designers Intel people Armenian inventors Armenian scientists Russian computer scientists Russian inventors Soviet computer scientists Russian scientists