Donald Becker

Founder and Chief Technical Officer, Scyld Software

Donald Becker was a co-founder of the original Beowulf project, which is the cornerstone for commodity-based high-performance cluster computing. Don's work in parallel and distributed computing began in 1983 at MIT's Real Time Systems group. He is known throughout the international community of operating system developers for his contributions to networking software and as the driving force behind beowulf.org.

After MIT, Don was a researcher at the Institute for Defense Analyses Supercomputing Research Center, working on parallel compilers, specialized computational techniques, and various networking projects. Subsequently, he started the Beowulf Parallel Workstation project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. While at NASA, he led the technical development of the Beowulf project and made significant contributions to the Linux kernel, most visibly in providing very broad support for networking devices.

Don is a co-author of How To Build a Beowulf: A guide to the Implementation and Application of PC Clusters and a co-editor of the Extreme.Linux CD-ROM, the first packaged Beowulf software distribution. With colleagues from the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Becker was the recipient of the IEEE Computer Society 1997 Gordon Bell Prize for Price/Performance. In 1999 Becker received the Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming Award, which is presented annually to individuals who, "in the spirit of innovation and cooperation, have made significant contributions to the advancement of software development."

Don holds a Bachelor of Science degree from MIT.