Meet Akhmed Rakhmati, Principal Engineer, Path Finding

For our new Employee Spotlight, I would like to introduce you to Akhmed Rakhmati. He joined us just under a year ago and is part of our Path Finding team.

Akhmed lives in New York City and grew up in Scarborough,?ON. He shared that his favorite dish is Chili Chicken which is a really popular dish in Hakka restaurants where he grew up in Scarborough, ON.

What inspired you to pursue a career in this field?

As a child of immigrants I felt like my options were more or less limited to being an engineer, a lawyer or a doctor. And out of those becoming an engineer was a straightforward choice because I enjoyed solving math and physics problems a lot. And I selected computer engineering because my best friend from high school decided to study it as well. And during my undergrad I was lucky to have Shawki Areibi and Graham Taylor as professors. By working with them I learned about Hardware/Software Co-Design and Machine Learning. In addition to teaching me about those topics, they transferred their passion to me as well which ultimately led me to working for Tenstorrent.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

I really enjoy the variety of problems that we work on which keeps us pretty busy but also makes the work very interesting. And I value the flexibility we have as a team in terms of making design decisions.

What are some of the proudest accomplishments in your career so far?

There are a few:

• The very first ResNet demo on the very first TT chip
• The fastest ResNet demo on TT chip at 15k FPS
• Implementing training support on TT Hardware
• Implementing sparse matrix multiplication that took advantage of our unique architecture
• And finally, Reportify - the visualization tool that survived multiple iterations of software and my sabbatical.

What do you think sets Tenstorrent apart from others in the industry?

What sets TT apart to me is its incredible engineers are capable of solving novel problems and are able to adapt to the ever-changing needs of the AI industry. And also the ability of the company as a whole to learn from the past mistakes and move forward with a new and improved vision.

How do you stay motivated and productive at work?

I believe that work-life balance is important for maintaining productivity. And I make sure I take breaks when needed in order to reset. And what keeps me motivated is a two-fold answer. I enjoy the fact that I get to solve interesting problems. And I also hope that we can democratize AI with our hardware and make the world a more equitable place.

What hobbies or interests do you have outside of work?

I like learning new languages because they unlock a new part of the world and of myself. I can speak five languages well enough for the native speakers to understand me and I am planning to learn a few more. And I also love motorcycle road trips. Especially when traveling to a new place and exploring new roads.