Bio

Thomas Sohmers is a serial entrepreneur, processor architect, and high performance computing enthusiast currently serving as the Head of Distributed Systems at Groq Inc. At Groq, Thomas is responsible for the development and deployment of rack and datacenter scale uses of Groq’s high performance Machine Learning and HPC focused processor, and is a key contributor across the hardware, software, and product organizations. Prior to Groq, Thomas had started two fabless semiconductor startups: REX Computing, which developed an energy efficient processor for DSP workloads, and Terapute Technologies, which developed cryptocurrency ASICs. At both, he led processor/ASIC architecture, drove initial floorplanning and trial PnR, and oversaw both internal and external engineering resources from initial design conception to packaged chips on bringup boards. He also served as Principal Hardware Architect at Lambda, where he was responsible for the full design and build out of an 800-GPU datacenter that served Lambda's public GPU-by-the-hour Cloud service.. Thomas was also a recipient of one of the 2013 Thiel ''20 under 20'' Fellowships, and featured on the 2015 Forbes ''30 under 30'' list. In his free time, he enjoys augmented and virtual reality systems, general hardware hacking, science fiction movies/shows/books/games, electric vehicle tuning, and playing rock'n'roll.