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Donald Becker is an American
computer programmer who wrote
Ethernet
Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1 ...
drivers for the
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...
operating system.
Becker, in collaboration with
Thomas Sterling, created the
Beowulf clustering software while at
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
, to connect many inexpensive PCs to solve complex math problems typically reserved for classic
supercomputers. For this work, Becker received the
Gordon Bell Prize
The Gordon Bell Prize, commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize of Supercomputing, is an award presented by the Association for Computing Machinery each year in conjunction with the SC Conference series (formerly known as the Supercomputing Confere ...
in 1997.
Becker became the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Scyld Computer Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Penguin Computing, a developer and supplier of Beowulf clusters.
References
External links
Scyld Computer Corporation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Becker, Donald
Free software programmers
American chief technology officers
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
