Then Emeagwali succeeded in programming 65,536 processors to solve one of the twenty most difficult problems in the computing field. His breakthrough was achieved by dividing the problem into 65,536 smaller problems, mapping, communicating and distributing them to 65,536 processors. The result was 3.1 billion calculations per second - a world record.
Emeagwali's discovery demonstrated that it is practical to design supercomputers with thousands of processors and led to the reinvention of supercomputers.
Born in 1954, in Nigeria, Africa, President Bill Clinton called him "one of the great minds of the Information Age" and CNN called him "A Father of the Internet."
He invented an international network that was similar to, but predated, the Internet. He also won the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize, computation's Nobel prize, for inventing a formula that lets computers perform the fastest computations, work that led to the reinvention of supercomputers.
The massively parallel supercomputer, shown in the background, contains 65,536 processors that are networked together as a twelve-dimensional hypercube. The supercomputer contains 4096 nodes with each node consisting of 16 processors. It is used for nuclear simulations, extracting oil and gas, and studies of the atmosphere.

August 26, 2000
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
IN ADDRESS TO JOINT ASSEMBLY
House of Representatives Chamber
National Assembly Building
Abuja, Nigeria

One of the great minds of the Information Age is a Nigerian American named Philip Emeagwali. He had to leave school because his parents couldn't pay the fees. He lived in a refugee camp during your civil war. He won a scholarship to university and went on to invent a formula that lets computers make 3.1 billion calculations per second. (Applause.) Some people call him the Bill Gates of Africa. (Laughter and applause.)
But what I want to say to you is there is another Philip Emeagwali -- or hundreds of them -- or thousands of them -- growing up in Nigeria today.
I thought about it when I was driving in from the airport and then driving around to my appointments, looking into the face of children. You never know what potential is in their mind and in their heart; what imagination they have; what they have already thought of and dreamed of that may be locked in because they don't have the means to take it out.
That's really what education is. It's our responsibility to make sure all your children have the chance to live their dreams so that you don't miss the benefit of their contributions and neither does the rest of the world.
It's in our interest in America to reach out to the 98 percent of the human race that has never connected to the Internet.

photos courtesy of emeagwali.com