Who is the person behind Nvidia's next-gen platform 'Rubin'?

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang surprised the audience by disclosing its next-generation platform's name "Rubin." Since Nvidia has been naming its products and platforms after famous scientists, who is the "Rubin" that the next generation platform is named after?

Richard Chang, a retired engineer-turned-popular science writer, wrote that Jensen Huang already gave a hint to the mystery. "Vera is the name of the CPU to be used for the platform."

Chang pointed out that Nvidia has been naming its products after scientists since 1998. For example, in 2022, Nvidia named its CPU and GPU architecture after Grace Hopper, the "Mother of COBOL", and the next-generation products announced this time is an astronomer. Rubin and Vera are the first and last names of Vera Rubin, who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates.

Vera Florence Cooper Rubin (July 23, 1928 - December 25, 2016), was remembered as an advocate for women in science and a mentor for aspiring women astronomers. "She transformed modern physics and astronomy with her observations showing that galaxies and stars are immersed in the gravitational grip of vast clouds of dark matter," wrote the New York Times. "Her work helped usher in a Copernican-scale change in cosmic consciousness, namely the realization that what astronomers always saw and thought was the universe is just the visible tip of a lumbering iceberg of mystery."

By identifying the galaxy rotation problem, her work provided evidence for the existence of dark matter. These results were later confirmed over subsequent decades, according to Wikipedia.

She was honored throughout her career for her work, receiving the Bruce Medal, the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, and the National Medal of Science, among others. The list of scientists behind Nvidia's computing architectures:

Source: Richard Chang, compiled by DIGITIMES, 2024/6