A Look Back on 30 Years of the Gordon Bell Prize

The Gordon Bell Prize is awarded each year by the Association for Computing Machinery to recognize outstanding achievement in high-performance computing (HPC). The purpose of the award is to track the progress of parallel computing with particular emphasis on rewarding innovation in applying HPC to applications in science, engineering, and large-scale data analytics. Prizes may be awarded for peak performance or special achievements in scalability and time-to-solution on important science and engineering problems. Financial support for the US$10,000 award is provided through an endowment by Gordon Bell, a pioneer in high-performance and parallel computing. This article examines the evolution of the Gordon Bell Prize and the impact it has had on the field.