Krishna Subramanian
Sparc Compiler Development Team, Sun Microsystems

Let's just say Krishna Subramanian got an early start on life! When barely 16, she received a full academic scholarship to Angelo State University. Convincing her parents that she could travel 12,000 miles and live alone in another country was more difficult than the academic rigor. She completed her B.S.C.S. in just three years and graduated with suma-cum-laude. She then joined the University of Illinois where she received a research assistantship to work on the IMPACT compiler which is widely recognized as one of the most advanced prototyping compilers in the world.

In 1993, Krishna joined Sun as a key member of the Sparc compiler development team. In these three years, Krishna has designed and developed highly sophisticated algorithms to fully exploit the features of UltraSparc and Sun's next generation superscalar, pipelined processors. With Krishna's contribution, the performance numbers for the Spec92 benchmark suite increased by over 60% !! where squeezing even a 15% improvement is considered difficult.

Krishna has filed several patents, written many papers, and has given talks on her work.

Krishna's interest has not just been in the technical arena. She has been involved in developing customer relationship programs where customers can directly meet and talk to the engineers. She is also a member of a Customer Focus team. She is currently participating in a small, select team of managers, marketers and engineers to evaluate possible future products for SunSoft.

Krishna is very interested in the advancement of women in science and technology. She is a committee member of the Senior Women's Leadership and Empowerment Forum at Sun. This organization was started a year ago as a grassroots support group for women engineers at Sun. As a committee member, Krishna has been actively involved in shaping the direction and focus of this forum, and in organizing its meetings.

Krishna has numerous extra-curricular activities and interests. She volunteers for a non-profit organization aimed at making India 100% literate. She has also been learning Indian classical dance from the age of 5, and has given several public performances. Krishna also enjoys mountain-biking, rollerblading and hiking.