In the NYT, John Markoff profiles Sun co-founder and early Google investor Andreas Bechtolsheim, who this week unveiled his newest machine: the Sun Constellation System, which may be the world's fastest when installation is complete in the coming months. Snip:
(…)Mr. Bechtolsheim, who is 51 years old, has designed a parade of computers that have continued to squeeze the most processing power or storage capacity into the smallest possible space. And, despite becoming one of the richest people in the world, he remains obsessed with designing ever more powerful computers. His new machine, which is currently being installed at the Texas Advanced Computing Center in Austin, is the latest example of his trademark elegant and simple engineering. It is set apart from other supercomputers made from tens of thousands of networked microprocessor chips by Mr. Bechtolsheim's ability to orchestrate the range of computing disciplines that are needed to create the fastest computers.
As such, he is the leading candidate to inherit the mantle of Seymour Cray, a famous computer designer who consistently designed the world's fastest computers from the 1960s until his death in a car accident in 1996. "He is this amazing blend of artist and engineer and that reminds me of Seymour," said Larry Smarr, an astrophysicist and supercomputer user, who was an early customer of Sun Microsystems' computers as director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications during the 1980s.
Link, here is a Wikipedia entry. Image ganked from the Times, shot by Thor Swift.
