Boris Babaian

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Boris Babain

Boris Artashesovich Babaian (Russian: Борис Арташеcович Бабаян, Armenian: Բորիս Արտաշեսի Բաբայան, Azerbaijani: Boris Babayan Artashes oglu) (born Baku, 20 December 1933), an ethnic Armenian, is notable as the pioneering creator of supercomputers in the Soviet Union.

Babaian graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1957. He completed his Ph.D. in 1964 and his doctorate of science in 1971.

From 1956 to 1996, Babaian worked in the Lebedev Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering, where he eventually became chief of the hardware and software division. Babaian and his team built their first computers during the 1950s. In the 1970s, as chief architect he produced the first superscalar computer, the Elbrus-1. Using these computers in 1978, ten years before commercial applications appeared in the West, the Soviet Union developed its missile systems and its nuclear and space programs.

A series of Elbrus computers have been produced by Babaian's team. For example, the Elbrus-3 was built using an architecture that is called Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing (EPIC).

From 1992 to 2004, Babaian held senior positions in the Moscow Center for SPARC Technology and Elbrus International. In these roles he led the development of Elbrus2000 (single-chip implementation of Elbrus-3) and Elbrus90micro (SPARC computer based on domestically developed microprocessor) projects.

Since August of 2004, Babaian is the Director of Architecture for the Software and Solutions Group in Intel Corporation and scientific advisor of the Intel R&D center in Moscow. 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).

Babaian was awarded the two highest honors in the former Soviet Union: the USSR State Prize for Achievement in 1974 in the field of computer-aided design, and the Lenin Prize in 1987 for the Elbrus-2 supercomputer. Since 1984, he has been a corresponding member of the Academy of Science of USSR (later - Russian Academy of Science). As of 2007, he serves as professor at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and holds the Microprocessor Technology chair based in Moscow R&D center of Intel Corporation.