Google CEO mourns loss of modern data centre pioneer Luiz Andre Barroso

San Francisco: Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai mourned the passing away of veteran engineer Luiz Andre Barroso on Friday, who invented the modern data centre.

Barroso, a 22-year veteran of Google died on September 16 at the age of 59.

In a post on X, Pichai noted that Barroso was responsible for so many of Google’s technical achievements, including the data centre, computing infrastructure designs, and others.

“Unbearably sad to lose Luiz. He was behind so many of Google’s technical achievements, writing the book on our data centres, leading the design of our computing infrastructure, and so much more. He was at the top of his field, earning ACM’s highest honour in computer architecture, Google CEO wrote.

He further mentioned, “Luiz saw beauty in everything, be it a warehouse architecture, a major 9 chord, or a wing of a hyacinth macaw. I’ll miss our chats about nature, music, and football, esp Brazil and Barcelona. RIP my friend”.

Tributes poured in on X after hearing that Barroso is no more.

“Very sad to hear. Luiz was a very nice man,” a user wrote.

“Heartbreaking to hear this. I remember Luiz’s kindness and him singing so beautifully at the last offsite I was at Google pre-covid. He will be missed,” another user said.

Barroso joined Google in 2001, before that, he began his career in 1995 with Digital Equipment Corporation, where he worked for six years as a Principal member of the Research staff.

He received his BS and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering from Rio de Janeiro’s Pontificia Universidade Catolica and his Ph.D in Computer Engineering from the University of Southern California, US.

According to Google Bio, Barroso has co-authored “The Datacenter as a Computer,” the first textbook to describe the architecture of warehouse-scale computing systems.