The Scoop:

Education:

Ph.D. Computer Science, University of Maryland College Park.
M.S. Computer Science, University of Maryland College Park.
B.S. Astronomy, University of Maryland College Park.

Publications

Dissertation Research:

• Dynamic reconfiguration and customization of distributed services to meet application-specific requirements using virtual services.

Former Research:

• Software frameworks for augmenting programmability, administration, and usability of clustered computing systems.
• Application of object oriented software development methodologies to parallel programming.
• Analysis of the impact of caches in multiprocessor systems on the performance and scaling of large-scale scientific applications.
• Performance evaluation of the Convex SPP-1000 for CESDIS, NASA Goddard.
• Performance evaluation of the Beowulf clustered workstation.
• Development of supercomputers from commodity off the shelf parts and open source operating systems (i.e., Beowulf).
  I was lucky enough to have worked with Thomas Sterling, Don Becker, and Phil Merkey at Goddard Space Flight Center in developing the first Beowulf cluster. The Beowulf Project was partly responsible for motivating companies such as Compaq, IBM, and Cray to produce COTS Linux clusters that deliver supercomputer performance at a fraction of previous prices. Beowulf also either spawned or encouraged startups such as Linux Networx, Penguin Computing, and Scyld to develop cluster hardware and software products. Seven of the top ten supercomputers on the 2003 Top 500 supercomputer list are now clusters as well as 208 of the top 500 systems, many of them Beowulf-class. This result is unfortunate in some respects because clusters have many limitations; and supercomputing is sorely in need of new architectures if it is to reach sustained PetaFLOPS levels of performance.