LONDON – Intel has presented Professor Stephen Hawking with a birthday gift, a 300-mm wafer with the message "Happy Birthday Stephen Hawking" inscribed hundreds of times in copper letters defined using Intel's 32-nm manufacturing procress.
The silicon wafer was presented to Professor Hawking as a follow-up to a symposium, held to celebrate his 70th birthday and contributions to fundamental physics and cosmology. The event was streamed live by Intel on the Internet. Intel also announced it plans to provide sponsorship for an International Conference on Particle Physics and Cosmology, to be held in Cambridge on Sept. 2 to 6, 2013.
"This is a very special gift for an extraordinary scientist and an extraordinary man," said Professor Martin Curley, Intel vice president and director of Intel Labs Europe, as he presented the award. "Professor Hawking's ground-breaking scientific contributions and his remarkable resilience are an inspiration to us all."
Professor Stephen Hawking being presented with wafer by Professor Martin Curley of Intel Labs Europe.
Professor Stephen Hawking is director of research and founder of The Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at Cambridge. The Centre has recently received a Cosmos Mk IX supercomputer that is based on Intel processors and is being applied to complex mathematical challenges facing researchers in cosmological research. The supercomputer features 1,856 Intel Xeon E5 processor cores with 14.5-terabytes of globally shared memory.
The supercomputer will contribute to answering key questions such as: What happened in the first moments after the Big Bang? What were the primordial seeds that lead to the formation of galaxies, stars, planets and, ultimately people?
"We have a long standing relationship with Professor Hawking," said Justin Rattner, Intel Chief Technology Officer and managing director of Intel Labs, in a statement. "We are very pleased to continue to support the work of the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology and to work closely with Professor Hawking on improving his personal communication system."
Related links and articles:
www.ctc.cam.ac.uk
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