San Diego, CA — July 30, 2026 – HPCwire, the leading publication for news and information for the high performance computing industry, today announced the first half of its annual list of 35 Legends, representing the Class of 2026. The list recognizes 35 luminaries who have made HPC what it is today.
Thirty-five honorees are announced each year, selected by HPCwire editors and advisors based on their contributions to the HPC community over the past 35 years, and celebrated for the different ways they have helped move HPC forward. HPC is a unique market because scientific researchers, HPC customers, and vendors have all combined to advance HPC together, so the HPCwire 35 Legends are researchers, inventors, and executives who have turned ideas into technological and commercial successes.
“Leading the world’s foremost news publication covering high-performance computing for nearly four decades has been one of the greatest privileges of my professional life,” said Tom Tabor, Founder and CEO of TCI Media, publishers of HPCwire. “Throughout that journey, I’ve had the rare opportunity to learn from and engage with the visionaries who have shaped our industry. They share an unwavering commitment to advancing science, expanding human knowledge, and harnessing technology to improve lives around the world.”
“The creation of our Legends program has been especially meaningful because it has provided an opportunity to reflect on the extraordinary individuals whose ideas, leadership, and innovations have fundamentally changed the trajectory of high-performance computing,” Tabor continued. “These giants in our field possess not only exceptional intellect, but also the courage to venture into uncharted scientific and technological frontiers, often pursuing ideas long before the rest of the world recognized their significance. Their contributions extend far beyond breakthrough technologies — they have built the foundation upon which generations of scientific discovery now stand. Preserving and celebrating their legacy has been both an honor and a deeply rewarding experience. I am profoundly grateful to have shared even a small part of that journey with them.”
Due to the difficulty in choosing just 35 HPC rock stars, the HPCwire team issues an annual list of 35 names each year as ever more HPC luminaries continue to make amazing contributions to our industry.
The First 17 HPCwire 35 Legends are listed below, and the balance of the list will be released next month. All will be profiled on the 35 Legends microsite.
George Cotter
Loyal Champion for HPC in National Security
Marc Snir
Theoretician Behind the Software Foundation of Parallel Computing
Alan Gara
Visionary Behind the Blue Gene Revolution
Barbara Chapman
Passionate Creator of Open Development Standards for Exascale Programming
David Patterson
RISC Pioneer Who Saw That Less is More
Danny Hillis
Visionary Who Reimagined Parallel Computing
John Hennessy
Godfather of Silicon Valley
Valerie Taylor
Technical Visionary and Champion of HPC’s Future
David Culler
Pioneer of Scalable Parallel and Distributed Computing
Keren Bergman
Visionary for the Future of Photonic Computing
Douglas Kothe
Builder of the Exascale Computing Era
David Kuck
Pioneer Who Transformed Parallel Compilers
Margaret Martonosi
Champion of Energy-Aware Computer Architecture
Laxmikant Kale
Creator of Adaptive Parallel Programming
Sarita Adve
Theoretician Behind Modern Memory Consistency
Bill Dally
Accelerator Behind Modern GPU Computing
Peter Kogge
Architect of Exascale Vision
To read the HPCwire Legends profiles, please visit:
www.hpcwire.com/35-hpc-legends
About HPCwire
HPCwire is a news site and weekly newsletter covering the fastest computers in the world and the people who run them. As the trusted source for HPC news since 1987, HPCwire serves as the publication of record on the issues, opportunities, challenges, and community developments relevant to the global High Performance Computing space. Its reporting covers the vendors, technologies, users, and the uses of high performance, AI- and data-intensive computing within academia, government, science, and industry. Subscribe now at www.hpcwire.com.
About TCI Media
TCI Media (formerly Tabor Communications Inc.) is the home of the Wire publications: AIwire, HPCwire, BigDATAwire, and QCwire, which broadly cover Advanced Scale technologies for scientific and technical computing. The Wire publications closely follow the convergence of AI, HPC, and Big Data, and the evolution of Quantum Computing. Together, they unify the IT communities that we serve, providing news, analysis, and information to educate and engage users and decision-makers seeking high performance and advanced scale computing solutions for scientific and technical workloads across AI, HPC, Big Data, and Quantum Computing. More information can be found at www.tci-media.com.
