Nvidia has announced that Professor William Dally has been appointed the company's new Chief Scientist and Vice President of Research at the Santa Clara-based graphics juggernaught.

Prof. Dally's previous role was Chairman of the Computer Science Department at Standford University and will replace David Kirk who now becomes an Nvidia Fellow.

"Bill is legendary in the computer industry. He has made fundamental contributions, from parallel computing architectures to interconnects to low power designs to super fast I/Os," said Nvidia CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang. "I expect him to contribute at all of those levels and more. And he will take forward David's work of building Nvidia research into one of the most regarded labs in the world."

Prof. Dally's recent projects include, ELM: The Efficient Low-Power Microprocessor, On-chip Interconnection Networks, Sequoia: Programming the Memory Hierarchy and Scalable Network Fabrics. All of which appeal to Nvidia's moves into either highly parallel programming or ultra low power hardware (its Ion and Tegra platforms, for example).

Having picked David Kirk's brain last year, we look forward to meeting the new Chief and understanding his vision for Nvidia's future - we'll be sure to let you know!

Nvidia clearly feels that it needs to bolster its resources, investing more into research - it'll be interesting both how Kirk's role changes as he moves upwards and how Dally influences Nvidia's future. These guys are, after all, designing tomorrow's technology today.

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