Ruchir Puri

Leader of high performance design and methodology solutions for all of IBM's enterprise server and system chip designs, Puri has served as an IBM Fellow at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York. Most recently, he led the design methodology innovations for IBM's latest Power7 and zEnterprise microprocessors and subsequently led design methodology research efforts on future processors. For over 25 years, the complexity of chip designs grew exponentially. In order to keep the design team sizes from growing at the same rate, new tools and methodologies automated the processes for producing cost-competitive silicon.

Still, due to their performance demands, design of most high-end microprocessors remained a labor intensive art. Puri is quoted as saying, "My personal mission has been to bring more automation to the process of designing the brains behind our flagship server products - more science, less art." Through a series of innovations, he and his team created software tools and design methodologies that fundamentally transformed the way IBM microprocessors were designed, virtually eliminating custom hand designs.

The son of two college professors, he grew up on the campus of the National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra, India, from which he received a Bachelor's degree in Electronics & Communication Engineering in 1988. Puri earned his Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India in 1990, and his Ph.D. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1994. During his years at IBM, his focus remained steadfast on the intricate work of microprocessor design, a process that transformed dramatically over that time. Equipped with a keen technical intellect, vision, and a prodigious work ethic, Puri has been the driving force behind revolutionizing IBM's chip design process, historically a manually intensive undertaking.

He has received numerous accolades, including in 2012 the IBM Fellow designation, which was awarded for his transformational role in microprocessor design methodology. IBM Fellow is the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achieve. In addition, Puri received "Best of IBM" awards in both 2011 and 2012, the IBM Corporate Award from IBM's CEO, and several IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement awards. In 2007, he was named an IEEE Fellow for "contributions to automated logical and physical design of electronic circuits."

In 2009 he joined the IBM Academy of Technology, and also in 2009 he was awarded IBM Master Inventor. From 2006 onward he has served as a Distinguished Speaker at the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), and has served as an IEEE Circuits and Systems Distinguished Lecturer in 2010–2011. He has also received the SRC Outstanding Mentor award and has served as an Adjunct Professor at the Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York from 2000–2002. Puri was further honored with the John Von-Neumann Chair at the Research Institute of Discrete Mathematics at Bonn University, Germany in 2011, and received the 2014 Asian American Engineer of the Year Award.

He has delivered numerous keynotes and invited talks at major VLSI Design and Automation conferences, National Science Foundation and US Department of Defense Research panels. From 2005–2007 he served as an editor of IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems. Puri is an inventor of over 50 U.S. patents (both issued and pending) and has authored over 100 publications on the design and synthesis of low-power and high-performance circuits.

He is very passionate about technology among school children and has evangelized fun with electronics and FIRST LEGO LEAGUE Robotics in community schools. As a robotics coach, Puri considered the New York state championship win of his first-timer 6th grade middle school team—which went on to reach the 2013 FIRST Robotics world championship—one of his most treasured moments.