NVIDIA recruits Steve Fields, a veteran systems engineer from IBM, to lead datacenter systems development initiatives.

Nvidia has hired Steve Fields, the former IBM Power Systems Chief Engineer, to serve as vice president of data center system architecture, the company confirmed in November. Fields brought 30 years of IBM experience to the role, coming out of retirement after ending his tenure at IBM in April. The hiring underscores Nvidia's continued transformation into what CEO Jensen Huang has characterized as a "data center-scale company" and "full-stack computing company."

Fields was instrumental in developing IBM's Power Systems servers and was named an IBM fellow in 2015, the company's highest technical honor, for his leadership on the architecture and design of Power Systems. At that time, he focused on evolving the Power Systems platform for cloud computing, analytics, and emerging workloads. IBM stated that his "ability to solve problems that span multiple hardware and software disciplines has contributed to the improved performance and quality of IBM Power Systems" and noted he was "essential" to the success of IBM's Power processors in the UNIX and Linux server markets. He also served as a key contributor to IBM's OpenPOWER initiative, which opened chip and system architectures for partners to build products on.

Announcing the move on LinkedIn, Fields said the opportunity had drawn him back to work: "In the end I wanted to create some new work memories, make some new friends, and work with some new technologies, so last week I started a new job with NVIDIA. Lots to learn but looking forward to having a new kind of fun."

The hiring reflects Nvidia's expanding emphasis on data center systems, which include the DGX Station A100, a workstation packing four A100 GPUs for AI applications, and the DGX A100 system, which forms the basis for Nvidia's DGX SuperPod high-performance computing clusters. Two DGX SuperPods rank among the world's 500 fastest supercomputers, with Nvidia's Selene cluster currently in the No. 5 spot. Dominic Daninger, vice president of engineering at Nor-Tech, an Nvidia high-performance computing system builder partner based in Burnsville, Minnesota, characterized the hiring as reflecting Nvidia's increasingly vertical integration strategy, which includes its acquisition of Mellanox and its pending acquisition of Arm. With Fields' combined expertise in silicon and systems architecture, he will help Nvidia further integrate products into complete systems, making "it more and more difficult for a customer to move away from that," Daninger said.