How a 90‑Year‑Old Soviet Pioneer Shaped Modern Supercomputers

As the Chinese New Year approaches, many feel lazy and think about retirement, but 90‑year‑old Boris Babayan remains a prolific contributor to the computer industry.

First Computer Science Student in the USSR

Babayan was born in 1933 near the Caucasus in Azerbaijan, then part of the Soviet Union. During World War II, his school closed and he scribbled notes on discarded newspaper. In 1951, at age 18, he moved to Moscow, joined the innovative center of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology founded by Nobel laureates Peter Kapitsa and Lev Landau, and became the USSR’s first student of computer science—then called “machine mathematics.” While studying, he invented the “carry‑save algorithm,” a method still used in modern computers.

Chief Designer of Soviet Supercomputers

Babayan helped develop the BESM‑2 computer in 1958, which calculated satellite orbits and the trajectory for the first lunar‑landing rocket. Later, the Soviet Union built the high‑performance Elbrus series of supercomputers for military, missile, nuclear, and space programs. The first two generations featured superscalar architectures and a “Capability System” for advanced language support. The second generation used ten processors delivering 125 million operations per second. The third generation, led by Babayan, employed a 16‑processor VLIW design, ensuring simultaneous execution of instructions across processors.

Serendipitous Move to Intel

After the Cold War, Babayan collaborated with Sun founder Scott McNealy to establish a SPARC technology center in Moscow, developing UltraSPARC processors, Solaris OS, compilers, and multimedia libraries. In 1999, MCST released the E2K processor, capable of executing both Elbrus VLIW and Intel x86 code, achieving 10.2 GFLOP/s at 1.2 GHz—three times faster than Intel’s Itanium at the time. Intel acquired the related IP and hired Babayan as an Intel Fellow and architecture director, making him the second European Intel Fellow.

Highest Soviet Honors

Babayan received the Soviet State Prize in 1974 for outstanding computer‑aided design work and the Lenin Prize in 1987, recognizing him as the leading figure in Soviet computer science.

Mountaineering Champion

Beyond computing, Babayan is an avid mountaineer, scaling the Caucasus peaks in the 1950s and earning a silver medal at the 1957 Soviet championship on the Pamir plateau. He later helped raise the Elbrus flag on Alaska’s Mount McKinley, humorously claiming the Elbrus system outperforms the mountain.

He Doesn’t Want to Retire

After six decades in computing, Babayan shows no sign of retirement, stating he still has many projects and ideas to pursue, believing his absence would greatly reduce the chance of their realization.