---
title: "H. T. Kung"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "H. T. Kung"
aliases: ["Hsiang-Tsung Kung"]
first_seen: "2026-07-12T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["systolic arrays","TPU / cardiac metaphor","Charles E. Leiserson","Carnegie Mellon University (Warp/iWarp)","quote provenance / myth ledger"]
seek_code_commit: "729ee25"
---


Computer scientist (National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, BS 1968;
Carnegie Mellon PhD 1974) who co-invented the **systolic array** with
[[entity-charles-e-leiserson|Charles Leiserson]] in 1978 and gave the
architecture its name and rationale in his own 1982 paper, "Why Systolic
Architectures?" (*Computer* 15(1):37-46). He is now a faculty member at
Harvard SEAS, having spent much of his earlier career at Carnegie Mellon,
where his group's work fed CMU's Warp and iWarp systolic-hardware
projects; part of the 1982 paper was written while he was on leave at
ESL, Inc.'s Advanced Processor Technology Laboratory (1981).

Matters to this vault as the named origin of a metaphor that closes its
own loop three decades later: Kung reached for cardiac language to
describe the systolic array's rhythmic data movement
([[claim-systolic-array-named-after-cardiac-systole]],
[[claim-kung-1982-opening-paragraph-frames-dataflow-as-blood-circulation]]),
and Google's TPU engineers, apparently without invoking his etymology
deliberately, called their own systolic matrix unit "the heart of the
TPU" in 2017 ([[claim-tpu-matrix-unit-called-heart-of-the-tpu]]). A 2026
direct read of his 1982 paper also corrected a popular misquote that had
been circulating under his name — see
[[myth-kung-1982-processor-pumps-quote]].

## References
- [[claim-systolic-array-named-after-cardiac-systole]]
- [[claim-kung-1982-opening-paragraph-frames-dataflow-as-blood-circulation]]
- [[myth-kung-1982-processor-pumps-quote]]
- [[claim-tpu-matrix-unit-called-heart-of-the-tpu]] (names his 1980 paper as citation [Kun80])
- [[claim-systolic-arrays-dormant-decades-before-tpu-revival]]
- Captures: 2026-07-11/12 (first vault mentions, secondary-sourced quote);
  2026-08-12 (hub built — his 1982 paper read directly, correcting the
  quote)