IEEE Computer Society Charles Babbage Award

In 1989, the International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium established the Charles Babbage Award to be given each year to a conference participant in recognition of exceptional contributions to the field. In almost all cases, the award is given to one of the invited keynote speakers at the conference. The selection was made by the steering committee chairs, upon recommendation from the Program Chair and General Chair who have been responsible for the technical program of the conference, including inviting the speakers. It is presented immediately following the selected speaker's presentation at the conference, and he or she is given a plaque that specifies the nature of their special contribution to the field that is being recognized by IPDPS.

In 2019, The management of the IEEE CS Babbage Award was transferred to the IEEE Computer Society's Awards Committee.

Past recipients:
 * 2023 - Keshav K Pingali. "For contributions to programmability of high-performance parallel computing on irregular algorithms and graph algorithms."
 * 2022 - Dhabaleswar K. (DK) Panda. "For contributions to high performance and scalable communication in parallel and high-end computing systems."
 * 2021 - Guy Blelloch. "For contributions to parallel programming, parallel algorithms, and the interface between them."
 * 2020 - Yves Robert. "For contributions to parallel algorithms and scheduling techniques."
 * 2019 - Ian Foster. "For his outstanding contributions in the areas of parallel computing languages, algorithms, and technologies for scalable distributed applications."
 * 2017 - Mateo Valero. "For contributions to parallel computation through brilliant technical work, mentoring PhD students, and building an incredibly productive European research environment."
 * 2015 - Alan Edelman
 * 2014 - Peter Kogge
 * 2013 - James Demmel
 * 2012 - Chris Johnson
 * 2011 - Jack Dongarra
 * 2010 - Burton Smith
 * 2009 - Wen-Mei Hwu
 * 2008 - Joel Saltz
 * 2007 - Mike Flynn
 * 2006 - Bill Dally
 * 2005 - Yale N. Patt
 * 2004 - Christos Papadimitriou
 * 2003 - Michel Cosnard
 * 2002 - Steve Wallach
 * 2001 - Thomson Leighton
 * 2000 - Michael O. Rabin
 * 1999 - K. Mani Chandy
 * 1998 - Jim Gray
 * 1997 - Frances E. Allen
 * 1995 - Richard Karp
 * 1994 - Arvind
 * 1993 - K. Mani Chandy
 * 1992 - David Kuck
 * 1991 - Harold S. Stone
 * 1990 - H.T. Kung
 * 1989 - Irving S. Reed