Remembering Li Sanli: Pioneer of China’s Computer Architecture and Supercomputing

According to Guangming Daily, computer expert, Chinese Academy of Engineering academician, and Tsinghua University professor Li Sanli died on 23 April 2022 in Beijing at the age of 87.

Born in 1935 in Shanghai, Li graduated from Tsinghua University’s Radio Department in 1955 and earned an associate doctorate from the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1960; he was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 1995.

He held positions including professor in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Tsinghua, dean of the Computer College at Shanghai University, chief scientist of the national “Climbing Computer” project, convener of the second and third computer discipline review groups of the State Council Academic Degrees Committee, chair of IEEE China, and executive director of the European EUROMICRO association.

Li led the development of China’s first‑generation vacuum‑tube, transistor, integrated‑circuit, and VLSI computers, becoming a leading academic in computer‑architecture technology. He made notable contributions to microcomputers, local area networks, RISC, parallel processing, and high‑performance computing, and was among the first in China to advocate microcomputer LAN and RISC technologies, internationally proposing the “virtual register architecture”.

The high‑performance supercomputer “DeepSuper‑21C” he helped build entered the TOP500 list at rank 146, and the “Ziyou 3000” reached rank 126.

Editor: Chang Zhang