[svlug-announce] SVLUG Apr 6th meeting: Donald Becker, "Linux Clustering" (Reminder)

[Bill Kendrick]

This is a reminder that the Silicon Valley Linux Users Group
( http://www.svlug.org/ ) meets tomorrow, April 6th.

*** NOTE: ***
  This event will take place at the Santa Clara Westin Hotel.
  (See below for details.)


WHAT:

  Linux Clustering

WHEN:

  Wednesday, April 6, 2005,
  7pm-9pm or so.

WHO:

  Donald Becker
  CTO, Penguin Computing 

BACKGROUND:

  Donald Becker, Chief Scientist of Scyld Software and CTO of
  Penguin Computing, has consistently challenged conventional wisdom -- from
  the early days of his Beowulf Project at NASA through to the creation of
  Scyld as a commercial entity and the introduction of the Scyld Beowulf
  distribution.

  By upsetting expected beliefs, Donald has maintained a continuum of
  innovation in the Linux arena that continues to address unmet needs
  today. Ten years ago, it was widely believed that only custom-designed
  vector architectures could solve supercomputing problems...

  Along came Beowulf, which solved such problems using a connected cluster
  of commodity systems, based on Linux -- at a time when many who had not
  explored Linux either ignored it or grouped it with other "toy" systems.
  In fact, at the first cluster systems conference in 1997, the widely
  held belief was that Microsoft held the future of all software in its
  hands.

  Fast forward to 2000, when Scyld introduced a prototype of a
  Unified Cluster System, which completely changed the approach to
  building clusters by using a full installation only on a master node,
  with compute nodes running only applications.

  Donald's talk will look back on this history of challenging
  conventional wisdom, and how it has contributed to the startling
  growth in Linux clustering; and he'll also offer a glimpse of a future
  where, he believes, clustering will be the natural evolution of the
  computing ecosystem.


ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

  Donald is an internationally recognized operating system developer,
  and the original inventor of Beowulf.  In 1999, he founded Scyld
  Computing and led the development of the next-generation Beowulf
  cluster operating system, which is the cornerstone for commodity-based
  high-performance cluster computing.  Prior to founding Scyld, Don
  started the Beowulf Parallel Workstation project at NASA Goddard Space
  Flight Center.

  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.  He is the co-author of _How to Build a Beowulf: A Guide to
  the Implementation and Application of PC Clusters_.  With colleagues
  from the California Institute of Technology and the Los Alamos
  National Laboratory, he was the recipient of the IEEE Computer Society
  1997 Gordon Bell Prize for Price/Performance.  Don holds a B.S. from
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

WHERE:

  The Santa Clara Westin Hotel, Ballrooms C & D

  The ballrooms are officially part of the Westin, though for our
  purposes, think of them as part of the Convention Center.
  Directions on how to get there are listed at:

    http://www.svlug.org/directions/westin.shtml

  We've tried our very best for these directions to be accurate.  If you
  have any improvements to make, please let us know!
  webmaster AT svlug . org


*** NOTE ***
  We still lack a meeting venue for May 2005 and later.
  Please send suggestions to the SVLUG officers:
  officers @ svlug DOT org


We look forward to seeing you there!

If you just can't get enough, a smaller group usually goes to a local
restaurant/diner after the meeting.  We'll announce the restaurant
selection at the meeting.


-bill!
http://www.svlug.org/
Silicon Valley Linux Users Group