David Bader Selected Among '35 Legends in the Class of 2025' by HPCwire
Distinguished Professor David Bader in the Ying Wu College of Computing’s Department of Data Science has been recognized among an elite roster of High-Performance Computing (HPC) pioneers in the HPCwire 35 Legends Class of 2025 list. The honorees are selected annually based on contributions to the HPC community over the past 35 years that have been instrumental in improving the quality of life on our planet through technology.
“HPC has the potential to be the foundation for solving the defining challenges of the 21st century,” he said in a recent HPCwire interview.
He credits his advancements to hands-on experimentation using several Commodore Amiga 1000 personal computers that had been “collecting dust in a closet” to build his first parallel computer as an undergraduate at Lehigh University in the late 1980’s.
Bader’s radical (at the time) vision as a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland to construct supercomputers from commodity components while strategically incorporating high-performance technologies where they mattered most would ultimately lead him to develop the first Linux supercomputer. The innovation used commodity off-the-shelf components at a time when most supercomputers depended on proprietary operating systems and specialized hardware. He then went on to develop Roadrunner, the first Linux supercomputer for open use by the national science and engineering community via the NSF’s (National Science Foundation) National Technology Grid.
“The breakthrough came when I realized that the key wasn’t choosing between cost and performance but rather optimizing the integration of different technologies to maximize capability per dollar,” he said.
By demonstrating that a Linux-based system could achieve production supercomputing performance while improving accessibility and reducing cost, Bader was instrumental in establishing what is now the predominant architecture for all major supercomputing worldwide.
In 2021, Hyperion Research estimated that the total economic value of Linux supercomputing pioneered by his work has exceeded $100 trillion over the past 25 years.
Bader is currently director for the Institute for Data Science at NJIT, directing work that encompasses research centers in AI, big data, medical informatics, quantum computing, and cybersecurity.
He is a Fellow of IEEE, AAAS, SIAM, and ACM, and was awarded the IEEE Sidney Fernbach Award in 2021. His alma mater inducted him into the University of Maryland’s Innovation Hall of Fame the following year.