Clifford Click Jr. | |
|---|---|
| Occupations | Computer scientist, entrepreneur |
| Known for | HotSpot Server Compiler Azul Systems H2O.ai |
| Title | CTO at CRATUS Technology (since February 2019)[1] |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Texas A&M University (BS, MS) Rice University (PhD) |
| Doctoral advisor | Ken Kennedy |
| Website | hachyderm |
Clifford "Cliff" Click Jr. is an Americancomputer scientist and software engineer known for his work oncompiler design andJava virtual machine (JVM) performance. He was the primary architect of theHotSpot Server Compiler atSun Microsystems and co-founded several technology companies, includingAzul Systems andH2O.ai.[2]
Click earned his Bachelor of Science in electrical and electronics engineering fromTexas A&M University in 1988, followed by a Master of Science in computer science in 1992. Click earned his PhD in computer science fromRice University under the supervision ofKeith D. Cooper in 1995.[3] His doctoral research focused on automatedcompiler optimizations for any imperative language. His work there was funded byKen Kennedy, and led to the development of thesea of nodesintermediate representation, which enables the simultaneous execution of multiple optimizations.
At Sun Microsystems, Click authored the "Sea of Nodes" intermediate representation for the HotSpot JVM.[2] In 2002, he co-founded Azul Systems, serving as Chief JVM Architect and leading the development of specialized Java hardware andnon-blocking algorithms, including a high-performance wait-free hash map.[4][5] In 2012, he co-foundedH2O.ai, where he designed the core distributed math engine and in-memorykey-value store that allows the platform to perform large-scale parallel computations.[6][7]
In April 2016, Click joined the financial technology firmNeurensic as chief technology officer, where he oversaw the development of an artificial intelligence-based platform for detectingmarket manipulation and regulatory risk.[8]
In February 2019, Click was appointed chief technology officer (CTO) of CRATUS Technology, Inc., an engineering firm specializing inLidarmachine perception sensors, and industrialIoT automation systems.[1][9]