Milestone-Proposal:Linux-based Supercomputing

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Docket #:2024-24

This is a draft proposal, that has not yet been submitted. To submit this proposal, click on the edit button in toolbar above, indicated by an icon displaying a pencil on paper. At the bottom of the form, check the box that says "Submit this proposal to the IEEE History Committee for review. Only check this when the proposal is finished" and save the page.

To the proposer’s knowledge, is this achievement subject to litigation? No

Is the achievement you are proposing more than 25 years old? Yes

Is the achievement you are proposing within IEEE’s designated fields as defined by IEEE Bylaw I-104.11, namely: Engineering, Computer Sciences and Information Technology, Physical Sciences, Biological and Medical Sciences, Mathematics, Technical Communications, Education, Management, and Law and Policy. Yes

Did the achievement provide a meaningful benefit for humanity? Yes

Was it of at least regional importance? Yes

Has an IEEE Organizational Unit agreed to pay for the milestone plaque(s)? Yes

Has the IEEE Section(s) in which the plaque(s) will be located agreed to arrange the dedication ceremony? Yes

Has the IEEE Section in which the milestone is located agreed to take responsibility for the plaque after it is dedicated? Yes

Has the owner of the site agreed to have it designated as an IEEE Milestone? Yes

Year or range of years in which the achievement occurred:

1998

Title of the proposed milestone:

Linux-based Supercomputing, 1998

Plaque citation summarizing the achievement and its significance; if personal name(s) are included, such name(s) must follow the achievement itself in the citation wording: Text absolutely limited by plaque dimensions to 70 words; 60 is preferable for aesthetic reasons.

Roadrunner, the first supercomputer using the Linux operating system and consumer off-the-shelf parts, was developed at the University of New Mexico in 1998 by David A. Bader. Its dramatically cost-effective design led to its adoption by US government agencies and industry corporations. Within 15 years, the architecture of the world's top supercomputers traced back to Roadrunner’s design.

200-250 word abstract describing the significance of the technical achievement being proposed, the person(s) involved, historical context, humanitarian and social impact, as well as any possible controversies the advocate might need to review.

Since the 1960s, high performance computing (also called supercomputing or HPC) has contributed to scientific discoveries, engineering advances, and business innovation. Supercomputers have helped make cars and planes safer and more fuel efficient, enabled more accurate prediction of severe storms, contributed to oil and gas discoveries and to advancing renewable energy, and become a mainstream tool in sectors ranging from financial services to medicine and healthcare to entertainment. But it wasn’t until the 1990s that supercomputing became available beyond the confines of government labs and top-tier research universities. Research scientist David Bader, then a faculty member at the University of New Mexico, had been experimenting with commodity-based off-the-shelf (COTS) supercomputers since he was a doctoral student at the University of Maryland in the mid 1990s, as a solution that could be easier and cheaper to implement than traditional supercomputers. Bader continued that work when he came to UMN in 1998, when he became a Principal Investigator with National Science Foundation’s National Computational Science Alliance and developed the first Linux-based supercomputer. Called “Roadrunner,” the system was the first true Linux supercomputer provided to the general research community, offering the high-speed interconnections and low latency needed for high performance. This approach quickly changed HPC; in 2024 Linux-based systems are the foundation for 98% of HPC systems sold. Roadrunner opened up HPC to new communities of users and energized an international open source community dedicated to software and hardware development. In 2022, Hyperion Research found that over the last 25 years, Linux-based HPC contributed to the development of products worth more than $100 trillion and to countless research discoveries. Most recently, Linux-based HPC helped scientists understand and address COVID-19.

IEEE technical societies and technical councils within whose fields of interest the Milestone proposal resides.

IEEE Computer Society IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Parallel Processing IEEE Computer Society Technical Community on High Performance Computing

In what IEEE section(s) does it reside?

IEEE Albuquerque Section (New Mexico)

IEEE Organizational Unit(s) which have agreed to sponsor the Milestone:

IEEE Organizational Unit(s) paying for milestone plaque(s):

Unit: IEEE Albuquerque Section
Senior Officer Name: Lee Rashkin

IEEE Organizational Unit(s) arranging the dedication ceremony:

Unit: IEEE Albuquerque Section
Senior Officer Name: Lee Rashkin

IEEE section(s) monitoring the plaque(s):

IEEE Section: IEEE Albuquerque Section
IEEE Section Chair name: Lee Rashkin

Milestone proposer(s):

Proposer name: David A. Bader
Proposer email: Proposer's email masked to public

Please note: your email address and contact information will be masked on the website for privacy reasons. Only IEEE History Center Staff will be able to view the email address.

Street address(es) and GPS coordinates in decimal form of the intended milestone plaque site(s):

Electrical and Computing Engineering Building University of New Mexico 498 Terrace St NE Albuquerque, NM 87106

GPS: 35.08398839726963, -106.62219865632657

Describe briefly the intended site(s) of the milestone plaque(s). The intended site(s) must have a direct connection with the achievement (e.g. where developed, invented, tested, demonstrated, installed, or operated, etc.). A museum where a device or example of the technology is displayed, or the university where the inventor studied, are not, in themselves, sufficient connection for a milestone plaque.

Please give the address(es) of the plaque site(s) (GPS coordinates if you have them). Also please give the details of the mounting, i.e. on the outside of the building, in the ground floor entrance hall, on a plinth on the grounds, etc. If visitors to the plaque site will need to go through security, or make an appointment, please give the contact information visitors will need. The IEEE Milestone plaque will be placed at The University of New Mexico, in its Electrical and Computer Engineering Building (UNM Building 46), outside of Room 211, one of the department's computer labs. This placement will help to ensure good public viewing opportunity by any interested audience.

Are the original buildings extant?

Yes

Details of the plaque mounting:

The University of New Mexico, School of Engineering, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) agrees to host the proposed IEEE Milestone plaque commemorating Linux-based Supercomputing and to permit the plaque to be installed on the second floor of the ECE Building (UNM Building 46) near room 211, one of the department computer labs. This placement will help to ensure good public viewing opportunity by an interested audience.

How is the site protected/secured, and in what ways is it accessible to the public?

The University of New Mexico is a public university, and its Electrical and Computing Engineering Building is open to the public during normal business hours. No appointment is needed for visitors to see the plaque. The front door of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Building is open to visitors who can proceed directly to the planned location of the IEEE Milestone plaque. CCTV cameras provide security for the building and plaque.

Who is the present owner of the site(s)?

The University of New Mexico

What is the historical significance of the work (its technological, scientific, or social importance)? If personal names are included in citation, include detailed support at the end of this section preceded by "Justification for Inclusion of Name(s)". (see section 6 of Milestone Guidelines)

Justification of Name(s) in the Citation

The inclusion of David A. Bader's name in the citation is justified by several key factors:

Pioneering Technical Achievement: Multiple sources confirm that Bader was the first to successfully develop a Linux-based supercomputer using commodity off-the-shelf parts and high-speed, low-latency interconnection networks. This is verified by the IEEE Annals of History of Computing article (Reference 1) and the Computer History Timeline (Reference 2).
Independent Historical Recognition: Larry Smarr, a prominent figure in computing, specifically credits Bader for this "historic event," noting that it was "David's creative energies and innovation" that made it possible to build the first commodity off-the-shelf supercomputer for the National Technology Grid (Reference 3).
Lasting Impact: The significance of Bader's work is validated by leading experts in the field:
- Satoshi Matsuoka, director of RIKEN Center for Computational Science, credits Bader with expanding "the realm of supercomputing from narrow sets of technical computing to be the leading edge of mainstream computing" (Reference 4)
- Steve Wallach, a Seymour Cray Award recipient, attributes the Linux foundation of all Top 500 supercomputers to "Bader's technical contributions and leadership" (Reference 4)
Contemporary Documentation: The Albuquerque Journal (Reference 7) documented Bader's work at the time it occurred in 1999, providing contemporary verification of his role in developing Roadrunner.
Economic Impact: Hyperion Research specifically identifies Bader's pioneering efforts in the mid-1990s as key to transforming the HPC market, leading to Linux becoming "the foundation for 98% of all HPC systems sold" (Reference 6).

This extensive documentation from multiple independent sources clearly establishes Bader's central role in this achievement, making his inclusion in the citation both appropriate and necessary for historical accuracy.

Historical Significance

Since the 1960s, high performance computing (also called supercomputing or HPC) has contributed to scientific discoveries, engineering advances, and business innovation. Supercomputers have helped make cars and planes safer and more fuel efficient, enabled more accurate prediction of severe storms, contributed to oil and gas discoveries and to advancing renewable energy, and become a mainstream tool in sectors ranging from financial services to medicine and healthcare to entertainment. But it wasn’t until the 1990s that supercomputing became available beyond the confines of government labs and top-tier research universities. Research scientist David Bader, then a faculty member at the University of New Mexico, had been experimenting with commodity-based off-the-shelf (COTS) supercomputers since he was a doctoral student at the University of Maryland in the mid 1990s, as a solution that could be easier and cheaper to implement than traditional supercomputers. Bader continued that work when he came to UMN in 1998, when he became a Principal Investigator with National Science Foundation’s National Computational Science Alliance and developed the first Linux-based supercomputer. Called “Roadrunner,” the system was the first true Linux supercomputer provided to the general research community, offering the high-speed interconnections and low latency needed for high performance. This approach quickly changed HPC; in 2024 Linux-based systems are the foundation for 98% of HPC systems sold. Roadrunner opened up HPC to new communities of users and energized an international open source community dedicated to software and hardware development. In 2022, Hyperion Research found that over the last 25 years, Linux-based HPC contributed to the development of products worth more than $100 trillion and to countless research discoveries. Most recently, Linux-based HPC helped scientists understand and address COVID-19.

Linux-based supercomputing reshaped the supercomputing landscape by making it more open, accessible, and collaborative. It has driven technological innovation, supported scientific advancement across numerous fields, and delivered broad societal benefits. Below are some examples of this game-changing impact.

Technological Advances: The development of Linux-based HPC meant that a popular open source operating system became the underlying “language” of supercomputing, Linux replaced a fragmented landscape of proprietary software and hardware dominated by vendors and meant to run on specific HPC frameworks. In contrast, open source Linux could run in different HPC environments, allowing easier collaboration and compatibility across different hardware and with different software packages. Simple economics also fueled the Linux-based HPC revolution, since using commodity off-the-shelf (COTS) components drastically reduced the cost of building and maintaining supercomputing systems. Expensive, proprietary supercomputers were no longer the only option, and HPC was accessible to a broader range of organizations, including smaller universities and business users.

Linux-based systems are not only cheaper to build and deploy, but more scalable and flexible than traditional supercomputers. Linux’s modular, scalable architecture means that Linux-based supercomputers can grow in size and complexity to meet the changing needs of users. New software packages can be implemented to serve new communities of users, and nodes can be added to meet increasing computational demands. Linux systems have played an important role in the effort to develop exascale supercomputers capable of one quintillion operations per second. Linux-based supercomputing has also led to innovations that addressed performance bottlenecks (e.g., the first use of Myrinet and multiple network layers in Roadrunner), and has fostered a shift towards more open, modular, and customizable computing environments.

Accelerating Science, Engineering and Business: Linux supercomputers are a tool used in drug discovery, precision medicine, structural analysis, the design of crashworthy vehicles, structural design and analysis, climate modeling, risk assessment, civil engineering design, anti-terrorism, and most recently, to power artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The examples of its impact are many, including seismic simulations to develop hazard maps to protect property and save lives. Linux HPC helped researchers at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) create a detailed model of the hepatitis C virus, a major cause of liver disease with an annual healthcare cost of about $9 billion in the U.S. alone. Linux supercomputers enabled the development of a computer model that comprehensively simulates the human heart down to the cellular level – potentially helping to reduce coronary heart disease, which costs the U.S. more than $100 billion each year.

In business, GE has used Linux supercomputing to understand turbine behavior and gain a competitive advantage in fuel efficiency. Automotive and engine manufacturers use Linux HPC to develop next generation engines that use less fuel and could save more than $1 billion per year in fuel costs.

Improving Diversity and Access: The benefits of the Linux supercomputing revolution extend far beyond the economic value of the work done on Linux-based machines. Linux-based supercomputers built from commercially available servers greatly reduced the cost of high-end computing and meant that smaller universities, research centers, and businesses could utilize these systems. This democratization of supercomputing has brought new and diverse perspectives into the communities that have traditionally used supercomputing and has given new communities the chance to use supercomputing.

Summary: Linux supercomputers also contribute to creating a better world through applications in public safety, healthcare, environmental sustainability, cybersecurity, and much more. As the global economy changes and worldwide challenges threaten our wellbeing, Linux supercomputers continue to be the powerhouse systems that drive economic growth, solve problems, and ensure our safety.

What obstacles (technical, political, geographic) needed to be overcome?

Obstacles

Widespread adoption of Linux-based supercomputing faced obstacles that were technical, political, and geographical. The technical challenges often stemmed from the fact that these off-the-shelf systems, while cheaper, were not initially designed for the demands of high-performance computing. For example, the Linux kernel and related software required modification and optimization to support large-scale parallel processing, memory management, and the unique needs of scientific and technical computing. Specialized HPC software and tools – such as compilers, parallel programming libraries, and job schedulers – were not available in the 1990s and had to be customized for Linux systems. The very first Linux clusters used Ethernet for networking, which meant low bandwidth, high latency, and a limited ability to handle complex computations and inter-node communication. Hardware needed to be more robust and able to provide consistent performance and handle failures.

Humans also posed a challenge to the adoption of Linux supercomputing. Some longtime users of proprietary systems were skeptical of Linux supercomputers and their ability to handle HPC workloads. Vendors of proprietary systems, who dominated the supercomputing market, amplified this skepticism and resisted the move to Linux and open source. Additionally many organizations, particularly in government and industry, were locked into proprietary ecosystems, making it challenging to justify switching to Linux-based solutions, even if they could save money in the long run. As Bader set out to build Linux clusters with supercomputing speed and capabilities,he first needed to convince funding agencies that his work was a worthwhile investment, since the perception was that proprietary systems were more reliable and capable. Government agencies and research labs often had procurement policies that favored established vendors, another barrier to the adoption of Linux-based systems.

For Linux-based supercomputing to become worldwide and allow for international collaboration, other barriers needed to be overcome. Some regions and countries lacked the resources, the technical infrastructure, and the expertise to build and deploy Linux systems. Some simply had different research and business priorities, leading to uneven rates of adoption. Different regulations, export controls, and data sharing policies complicated international collaboration on Linux-based supercomputing and the lack of global standards for networking, software, and hardware made it difficult to integrate and collaborate on international Linux-based supercomputing efforts..

What features set this work apart from similar achievements?

What Features set this work apart

David Bader’s work to develop Linux-based supercomputing stands out from similar achievements in several key ways. These features highlight the unique contributions that this work has made to high-performance computing (HPC):

Use of Open-Source Linux Software: Unlike proprietary supercomputing solutions that dominated the market before the 1990s, Linux-based supercomputers use an open-source operating system. This paradigm shift leveraged the power of collaborative development, enabling rapid improvements, widespread access, and customization by a global community of developers.

Flexibility and Customization: Linux allows customization at both the kernel and user level, letting researchers and engineers tailor the OS specifically for HPC tasks. Proprietary systems were locked down and less adaptable.

Cost-Effective Supercomputing: Using standard, Commodity Off-the-Shelf (COTS) components, such as standard Intel processors and network hardware, dramatically reduced the cost of building and maintaining supercomputers. This approach made supercomputing more affordable and accessible to a broader range of institutions, including smaller universities, research labs, and even some businesses.

Scalability Through Modularity: Unlike traditional supercomputers that were monolithic and fixed in capacity, Linux-based supercomputers were modular and scalable. They could easily be expanded by adding more nodes, allowing institutions to grow their computational capacity as their needs evolved.

Innovative Use of High-Performance Networks: Bader used advanced networking solutions like Myrinet, which provided significantly higher bandwidth and lower latency compared to the Ethernet networking used in early clusters like Beowulf. The resulting improvement in inter-node communication allowed Linux supercomputers to efficiently handle a broad range of parallel processing tasks.

Multi-Network Architecture: The deployment of multiple networks for control, data movement, diagnostics, etc. within Linux supercomputers was a novel approach that improved reliability, scalability, and performance. The new approach also allowed for better resource management, system monitoring, and error handling, which were typically unavailable in other cluster-based systems.

Support for Diverse HPC Workloads: Earlier cluster systems including Beowulf were designed primarily for specific, loosely coupled applications, Linux-based supercomputers could handle a wide variety of HPC tasks, including those requiring tightly coupled parallel processing. This made them suitable for complex scientific simulations, data analysis, and engineering tasks.

Adaptability: The flexibility of Linux allowed it to quickly adapt to new scientific and industrial applications. As new fields like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and bioinformatics grew, Linux supercomputers could be easily configured to meet their specific computational requirements.

Demonstrated Viability: Bader's "Roadrunner" supercomputer at the University of New Mexico was the Linux-based system to demonstrate it could match or exceed the performance of traditional supercomputers while being more cost-effective and flexible. Roadrunner integrated advanced features like job scheduling, resource management, and low-latency networking, proving Linux’s viability as a platform for serious scientific computation.

Proof of Concept: By achieving high rankings on the Top500 list and delivering substantial computational power for real-world scientific projects, Linux-based systems demonstrated that open-source, COTS-based supercomputers could effectively compete with, and even surpass, traditional supercomputing solutions.

Broader Access and Inclusivity: Linux-based supercomputing opened up HPC resources to a broader range of users. This democratization enabled more institutions to participate in cutting-edge research and innovation, fostering a more inclusive scientific and technological ecosystem.

Lower Entry Barriers: The significantly lower costs of building and maintaining Linux-based supercomputers broke down financial barriers, enabling smaller organizations with fewer resources to access powerful computational tools previously reserved for elite institutions.

Foundation for Future Growth: The architecture and principles used for Linux-based supercomputing laid the groundwork for the next generation of HPC, including exascale computing. Linux, now the foundational OS for supercomputers, has been integral in developing scalable, flexible systems capable of reaching exascale performance (at least one quintillion floating-point operations per second).

Evolution and Community Support: The vibrant open-source community that has grown around Linux ensures ongoing development, optimization, and support for HPC needs, and keeps Linux-based supercomputers at the forefront of technological advancements in the field.

Summary:

Research and development in Linux-based supercomputing stands out for its pioneering use of open-source software, cost-effective COTS hardware, advanced networking strategies, and broad applicability across diverse scientific fields. It fundamentally transformed the supercomputing landscape by making high-performance computing more accessible, flexible, and scalable, paving the way for future innovations, including exascale computing. This revolution in HPC has democratized access to computational resources and enabled breakthroughs across multiple scientific and industrial domains.

Why was the achievement successful and impactful?

Overcoming Obstacles

Transforming Linux-based COTS systems into supercomputers included overcoming a host of obstacles. Advanced networking such as Myrinet high-speed LANs, and the optimization of Linux kernels and software for HPC tasks have meant more network speed, less latency, and fewer bottlenecks. Robust open source tools and libraries, such as Message Passing Interface (MPI), job schedulers, and resource allocation systems, have made Linux clusters easier to use and more feasible for users who want to avoid a steep learning curve.

Bader became an ambassador for this new type of supercomputing. Bader worked to secure funding to build and deploy Linux supercomputers and computing tools from government agencies, such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy (DOE) .He launched partnerships with industry leaders, such as IBM, to successfully deploy Linux supercomputers and showcase the work done on them. Through these efforts, the politics around Linux supercomputing began to change, and it soon had a positive reputation among industry leaders. New national and international partnerships were launched, such as the NSF’s Partners for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI), which helped create a faster, more robust national technology grid, pushed the development of standards for Linux-based HPC, and offered Linux supercomputing to a larger, more diverse community of users. As success stories were documented, the acceptance of Linux-based supercomputing grew and adoption became global.

Summary: Linux became the foundation of modern supercomputing because of the innovative research and continued advocacy of David Bader. As a Linux supercomputing technology creator, researcher, and advocate, he pushed against the established norms and set out to prove that Linux-based systems made from off-the-shelf parts could perform just as well as traditional supercomputers. He overcame the technical and social obstacles to make Linux-based systems the workhorse of modern supercomputing that drives advances in science, technology, medicine, and society worldwide.

Hyperion Research estimates that the total economic value of Linux supercomputing pioneered by Bader has been over $100 trillion over the past 25 years. (Hyperion Research: Special Study: The Economic and Societal Benefits of Linux Supercomputers, Earl Joseph, Melissa Riddle, Tom Sorensen, Steve Conway, April, 2022. URL: https://davidbader.net/publication/2022-hyperionresearch/ )

Supporting texts and citations to establish the dates, location, and importance of the achievement: Minimum of five (5), but as many as needed to support the milestone, such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or chapters in scholarly books. 'Scholarly' is defined as peer-reviewed, with references, and published. You must supply the texts or excerpts themselves, not just the references. At least one of the references must be from a scholarly book or journal article. All supporting materials must be in English, or accompanied by an English translation.

Reference 1:

D. A. Bader, "Linux and Supercomputing: How My Passion for Building COTS Systems Led to an HPC Revolution," in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 43, no. 3, pp. 73-80, 1 July-Sept. 2021, doi: 10.1109/MAHC.2021.3101415. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9546947

Excerpts:

“But something new was on the horizon – a revolution in supercomputing technology was beginning that would bring scalable, less expensive systems to a much wider audience. That revolution involved using a new, open-source, operating system called Linux, and collections of commodity off-the shelf (COTS) servers to obtain the performance of a traditional supercomputer. I was deeply involved with that revolution from the start.”

“My system design took a revolutionary new direction that differed significantly from Beowulf and the HPC research community's cluster efforts. From my experience with real applications, I knew that Beowulf did not have the capabilities to run the broad set of scientific computing tasks on contemporary supercomputers, and more engineering was necessary to create a Linux-based system that would displace traditional supercomputers.”

“I assembled a team and we built Roadrunner, which entered production mode in April 1999. Its hardware comprised fully configured workstations powered by 128 dual, 450 MHz, Intel Pentium II processors; a 512 KB cache; a 512 MB SDRAM with ECC; 6.4 GB IDE hard drive; and Myrinet interface cards. The Myrinet System Area Network (Myrinet/SAN) interconnection network was one of Roadrunner's main improvements over previous Linux systems, such as Beowulf and Avalon.”

Reference 2:

The Computer History Timeline of Computer History (1998): https://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/1998/

Excerpt:

“The first supercomputer using the Linux operating system, consumer, off-the shelf parts, and a high-speed, low-latency interconnection network, was developed by David A. Bader while at the University of New Mexico. From this successful prototype design, Bader led the development of “Roadrunner”, the first Linux supercomputer for open use by the national science and engineering community via the National Science Foundation's National Technology Grid. Roadrunner was put into production use in April 1999. Within a decade this design became the predominant architecture for all major supercomputers in the world.”

Reference 3:

Larry Smarr. see YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/live/HO1dhtV-Pbg?si=GIUdOIzjViQhNDrG&t=314

Excerpts:

“One of the most significant events that occurred in this period was when David (Bader) at University of New Mexico as a member of the Alliance created the first commercial off-the-shelf supercomputer, in other words a supercomputer built of PC server technologies and he put it on the National Technology Grid. So here was a commodity-built, PC-based endpoint going into the technology grid”

“This is an historic event. It took resources from the Alliance, but it took David’s creative energies and innovation to do that…I want to just say to you David it was your vision that you could build a commodity off-the-shelf component, put is as an endpoint on the National Technology Grid that really was the original idea from straight back in ‘97 up until now.”

Reference 4:

David Bader to Receive 2021 IEEE CS Sidney Fernbach Award, IEEE Computer Society: https://www.computer.org/press-room/2021-news/david-bader-to-receive-2021-ieee-cs-sidney-fernbach-award

Excerpts:

“David has expanded the realm of supercomputing from narrow sets of technical computing to be the leading edge of mainstream computing we see today in massive cluster-based supercomputers such as Fugaku, as well as hyperscale clouds,” said Satoshi Matsuoka, director of RIKEN Center for Computational Science. “As supercomputing progresses onwards, we should further continue to observe other elements in which David has contributed to their genesis.”

“Today, 100% of the Top 500 supercomputers in the world are Linux HPC systems, based on Bader’s technical contributions and leadership. This is one of the most significant technical foundations of HPC,” noted Steve Wallach, a guest scientist for Los Alamos National Laboratory and 2008 IEEE CS Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award recipient.

Reference 5:

University of Maryland, A. James Clark School of Engineering, Innovation Hall of Fame 2022: https://eng.umd.edu/ihof/david-bader

Excerpts:

“Bader designed the first high-performance supercomputer based on commodity parts, reducing expenses by an order of magnitude. From a prototype he built in 1998 using commodity off-the-shelf parts and a high-speed low-latency interconnection network, Bader led the design of the first Linux Supercomputer Roadrunner for open use by the national science and engineering community via the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) National Technology Grid. His computer was first used in April 1999., including the first Linux supercomputer, using consumer off-the-shelf parts. Inducted in 2022 for his leadership in computer engineering, including the first Linux supercomputer, using consumer off-the-shelf parts.”

“Bader then led the technical design team of the NSF Alliance’s LosLobos system, the first-ever Linux production system built by IBM. IBM turned Bader’s design into the industry’s first pre-assembled and configured Linux server clusters for business. By 2018, all of the top 500 supercomputers in the world traced back to Bader’s technical contributions and leadership.”

Reference 6:

Hyperion Research: Special Study: The Economic and Societal Benefits of Linux Supercomputers Earl Joseph, Melissa Riddle, Tom Sorensen, Steve Conway April, 2022 https://davidbader.net/publication/2022-hyperionresearch/

Excerpts:

“In the mid 1990's, groups like NCSA with the pioneering efforts of David Bader began supplementing and replacing more traditional expensive HPC systems with cheaper, commodity off- the-shelf machines using open-source Linux operating systems. This approach changed the HPC market very quickly and is now the foundation for 98% of all HPC systems sold”

The rise of Linux in supercomputing over the last three decades is the cumulative work of countless projects and contributors. That said, few have made such a singular contribution to the conception of this paradigm as David Bader. About Bader's impact on the modern state of supercomputing, National Academy of Engineering member Steve Wallach said, ‘[...] 100% of the Top500 supercomputers in the world are Linux HPC systems, based on Bader’s technical contributions and leadership. This is one of the most significant technical foundations of HPC.’”

“The direct economic returns from selling Linux computers in 2022-2026 are projected to exceed $90 billion in servers and an additional $90 billion for the supporting infrastructure. This results in nearly $200 billion in revenue generated from selling Linux supercomputers over just a five-year period. This represents a sizable amount of economic gain, especially since the use of these Linux systems generates research valued at least ten times over the purchase price.”

“Linux supercomputers have played crucial roles in companies, universities, and government agencies worldwide. The development of advanced aircraft and spacecraft relies on Linux supercomputers. Linux supercomputers enable national and international weather and severe storm predictions that help save lives and billions of dollars in property. Medical researchers use Linux supercomputers to discover lifesaving medicines and model dangerous microbes…But that's just part of the story. Without supercomputers, detecting today's sophisticated cyber security breaches, insider threats and electronic fraud would be impractical. In short, Linux HPC systems have become indispensable for maintaining both national security and economic competitiveness.”

Reference 7:

UNM To Crank Up $400,000 Supercomputer Today, Machine One of the 100 Speediest in World, Albuquerque Journal, Apr 8, 1999. By John Fleck, Journal Staff Writer https://www.newspapers.com/image/319289210/ https://davidbader.net/post/19990408-abqjournal/

Excerpts:

“The Roadrunner supercluster will be part of what researchers are calling The National Technology Grid, a collection of supercomputers across the country wired together to help handle scientists’ growing demand for computer time.”

“The $400,000 supercomputer bears the mark of a new breed of moderately priced machines that are making inroads in the high-performance scientific market. Instead of using specialized, high-performance computer chips, made especially for supercomputing, it’s built around 128 top-of-the-line Intel Pentiums, the same breed of computer chips used in desktop computers.”

Supporting materials (supported formats: GIF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, DOC): All supporting materials must be in English, or if not in English, accompanied by an English translation. You must supply the texts or excerpts themselves, not just the references. For documents that are copyright-encumbered, or which you do not have rights to post, email the documents themselves to ieee-history@ieee.org. Please see the Milestone Program Guidelines for more information.

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