At AMD now, Zacharia saw new potential in GPUs and nudged Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s founder and chief executive, to commit the company’s GPU technology to something that had never been tried at this scale: a scientific supercomputer
Thomas Zacharia has over the last few decades helped reshape the global computing landscape – including, improbably, the fortunes of a company he does not work for. Zacharia, senior VP of strategic technical partnerships and public policy at AMD and based in Austin, Texas, is one of the more consequential figures in the story of how AI moved from academic curiosity to industrial force. That story begins not in Silicon Valley, but in Kerala.
Zacharia grew up moving. His father worked in Kerala’s public health engineering department and was transferred every two or three years, meaning the young Thomas cycled through a series of schools – in places like Cochin and Kottayam – accumulating what he describes as a “remarkable” education by attrition. He did his pre-degree at Maharaja’s College in Cochin, and his Bachelor’s from what is now NITK Surathkal. “My parents’ confidence in me getting an admission elsewhere was not high,” he said. “They said, you better take that.”
Zacharia grew up moving. His father worked in Kerala’s public health engineering department and was transferred every two or three years, meaning the young Thomas cycled through a series of schools – in places like Cochin and Kottayam – accumulating what he describes as a “remarkable” education by attrition. He did his pre-degree at Maharaja’s College in Cochin, and his Bachelor’s from what is now NITK Surathkal. “My parents’ confidence in me getting an admission elsewhere was not high,” he said. “They said, you better take that.”