David Ross Cheriton (born March 29, 1951) is a Canadian computer scientist, mathematician, billionaire businessman, philanthropist, and venture capitalist. He is a computer science professor at
Stanford University,
where he founded and leads the Distributed Systems Group.
He is a
distributed computing and
computer networking expert, with insight into identifying big market opportunities and building the architectures needed to address such opportunities. He has founded and invested in technology companies, including
Google, where he was among the first
angel investor
An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital for a business or businesses start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or owner ...
s;
VMware, where he was an early investor; and
Arista, where he was cofounder and chief scientist. He has funded at least 20 companies.
Cheriton was ranked by
Forbes with an estimated net worth of
US$
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
8.8
billion
Billion is a word for a large number, and it has two distinct definitions:
*1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or (ten to the ninth power), as defined on the short scale. This is its only current meaning in English.
*1,000,000,000,000, i.e. ...
, as of April 2021. He has made contributions to education, with a $25 million donation to support graduate studies and research in the School of Computer Science (subsequently renamed
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science) at the
University of Waterloo,
a $7.5 million donation to the
University of British Columbia,
and a $12 million endowment in 2016 to Stanford University to support Computer Science faculty, graduate fellowships, and undergraduate scholarships.
Education
Born in
Vancouver,
British Columbia, Canada, Cheriton attended public schools in the
Highlands
Highland is a broad term for areas of higher elevation, such as a mountain range or mountainous plateau.
Highland, Highlands, or The Highlands, may also refer to:
Places Albania
* Dukagjin Highlands
Armenia
* Armenian Highlands
Australia
* So ...
neighborhood of
Edmonton,
Alberta
Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Terri ...
, Canada.
He briefly attended the
University of Alberta
The University of Alberta, also known as U of A or UAlberta, is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford,"A Gentleman of Strathcona – Alexander Cameron Rutherf ...
where he had applied for both mathematics and music. He was rejected by the music program, and then went on to study mathematics and received his
Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree from the
University of British Columbia in 1973.
Cheriton received his
Master of Science (M.S.) and
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees in computer science from the
University of Waterloo in 1974 and 1978, respectively. He spent three years as an assistant professor at his
Alma mater, the University of British Columbia, before moving to Stanford.
Research
Cheriton was involved in creating three
microkernel
In computer science, a microkernel (often abbreviated as μ-kernel) is the near-minimum amount of software that can provide the mechanisms needed to implement an operating system (OS). These mechanisms include low-level address space management, ...
operating systems (OSes). He was one of the early principal developers of
Thoth
Thoth (; from grc-koi, Θώθ ''Thṓth'', borrowed from cop, Ⲑⲱⲟⲩⲧ ''Thōout'', Egyptian: ', the reflex of " eis like the Ibis") is an ancient Egyptian deity. In art, he was often depicted as a man with the head of an ibis or a ...
, a
real-time operating system
A real-time operating system (RTOS) is an operating system (OS) for real-time applications that processes data and events that have critically defined time constraints. An RTOS is distinct from a time-sharing operating system, such as Unix, which m ...
, and then the Verex
kernel
Kernel may refer to:
Computing
* Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems
* Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution
* Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming
* Kernel method, in machine learni ...
. He then founded and led the Distributed Systems Group at
Stanford University, which developed a microkernel OS named
V. He has published profusely in the areas of
distributed computing and
computer networking.
He won the prestigious SIGCOMM award in 2003, in recognition for his lifetime contribution to the field of
telecommunications networks. Cheriton was the mentor and advisor of students such as: Sergey Brin and Larry Page (founders of Google), Kenneth Duda
(founder of Arista Networks), Hugh Holbrook
(VP Software Engineering at Arista Networks), Sandeep Singhal
(was GM at Microsoft, now at Google), and Kieran Harty
(CTO and founder of Tintri).
As of 2016, Cheriton is working with Stanford students on
transactional memory, making memory systems that are resilient to failures.
Industry
Cheriton cofounded Granite Systems with
Andy Bechtolsheim
Andreas Maria Maximilian Freiherr von Mauchenheim genannt Bechtolsheim (born 30 September 1955) is a German electrical engineer, entrepreneur and investor. He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and was its chief hardware designer. His net worth ...
. The company developed
gigabit Ethernet products. It was acquired by
Cisco Systems in 1996.
In August 1998, Stanford students
Sergey Brin and
Larry Page
Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American business magnate, computer scientist and internet entrepreneur. He is best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin.
Page was the chief executive officer of Google from 1997 until ...
met Bechtolsheim on Cheriton's front porch. At the meeting, Bechtolsheim wrote the first cheque to fund their company,
Google, and Cheriton joined him as an angel investor with a $200,000 investment.
Cheriton was also an early investor in compute
virtualization leader
VMware, which was later acquired for $625M by EMC in 2004. VMware had a successful public offering in 2007.
In 2001 Cheriton and Bechtolsheim founded another start-up company, Palo Alto based Kealia. Kealia designed a high-capacity streaming video server; Galaxy, a range of servers based on AMD's
Opteron microprocessor; and Thumper, an enterprise-grade
network attached storage system.
Kealia was bought by
Sun Microsystems in 2004, with Thumper becoming the
Sun Fire X4500.
In 2004, Cheriton cofounded (again with Bechtolsheim) and was chief scientist of
Arista Networks, where he worked on the foundations of the
Extensible Operating System (EOS). Arista had a successful public offering in 2014.
Cheriton is an investor in and advisory board member for frontline data warehouse company
Aster Data Systems
Aster Data Systems was a data management and analysis software company headquartered in San Carlos, California. It was founded in 2005 and acquired by Teradata in 2011.
History
Aster Data was co-founded in 2005 by Stanford University graduate st ...
, which was acquired by
Teradata in 2011 for $263M.
Cheriton is also one of the earliest investors in Tintri, a storage virtualization company founded by his student Kieran Harty.
Cheriton was also an early investor in in-video advertising company Zunavision,
and he founded OptumSoft.
In 2014, Cheriton cofounded and invested in Apstra, Inc. In 2015, he cofounded and invested in BrainofT, Inc. (Caspar).
Lifestyle
Although the Google investment alone would be worth over
US$
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
1 billion, Cheriton has a reputation for a frugal lifestyle, avoiding costly cars or large houses. He was once included in a list of "cheapskate billionaires".
On November 18, 2005, the
University of Waterloo announced that Cheriton had donated $25 million to support graduate studies and research in its School of Computer Science. In recognition of his contribution, the school was renamed the ''
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science''.
In 2009, he donated $2 million to the
University of British Columbia, which will go to fund the
Carl Wieman
Carl Edwin Wieman (born March 26, 1951) is an American physicist and educationist at Stanford University, and currently the A.D White Professor at Large at Cornell University. In 1995, while at the University of Colorado Boulder, he and Eric All ...
Science Education Initiative (CWSEI). He more recently donated $7.5M to fund a new chair in computing, and a new course on computational thinking.
Cheriton has also funded two graduate student fellowships and one undergrad fellowship at Stanford, and donated several millions of dollars to Stanford to fund research.
He campaigned against
Asynchronous Transfer Mode
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is a telecommunications standard defined by American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and ITU-T (formerly CCITT) for digital transmission of multiple types of traffic. ATM was developed to meet the needs of ...
(ATM) that was favored by telephone carriers, preferring
Ethernet, which he saw as a simpler, proven option. Ethernet gradually superseded alternatives.
Personal life
In 1980, Cheriton married Iris Fraser. They had four children and divorced in 1994.
According to public record, Cheriton made a total of over $5,000 donations to the presidential candidate
Donald Trump in 2019.
See also
*
List of University of Waterloo people
The University of Waterloo, located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, is a comprehensive public university that was founded in 1957 by Drs. Gerry Hagey and Ira G. Needles. It has grown into an institution of more than 42,000 students, faculty, and ...
References
External links
*
Stanford University Distributed Systems GroupFounder of Intent Based Networking Company ApstraDavid Cheriton speaks at the Open Networking User Group (ONUG) Great Debate
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cheriton, David
1951 births
Living people
Businesspeople from Vancouver
Canadian billionaires
Canadian computer businesspeople
Canadian computer scientists
Canadian expatriate academics in the United States
Canadian mathematicians
Canadian technology chief executives
Canadian technology company founders
Canadian venture capitalists
Scientists from Vancouver
Stanford University School of Engineering faculty
University of British Columbia Faculty of Science alumni
University of British Columbia faculty
University of Waterloo alumni