Penguin Computing acquires Beowulf clustering company

Linux server company Penguin Computing is buying Scyld Computing, the privately held Beowulf cluster management software vendor led by Donald Becker, a former NASA scientist and Linux networking development pioneer who will stay on as chief technology officer.

Linux server company Penguin Computing is buying Scyld Computing, the privately held Beowulf cluster management software vendor led by Donald Becker, a former NASA scientist and Linux networking development pioneer who will stay on as chief technology officer.

“I’m really looking forward to this,” Becker said of the acquisition. About 20 people developed Scyld’s Beowulf cluster operating system, with five still at the company. The acquisition means that more people will be brought on to help develop the next version of the software. Scyld will be a software division of Penguin Computing with its own brand out of its Annapolis, Md., office.

The Beowulf concept is that high-performance massively parallel computing systems can be built out of commodity hardware components that run a free OS such as Linux or FreeBSD, with the machines linked on a high-speed connection. Such systems can be built inexpensively, and the Beowulf movement has grown out of the needs of scientists and researchers, who often philosophically prefer to use something other than Windows, and who need a lot of computing power but don’t have much money to spend.

Penguin Computing, based in San Francisco, makes servers that use Intel and Advanced Micro Devices chips. The company was founded in 1998 with the goal of making servers as reliable as those from IBM, Sun and SGI, according to the company Web site. Rather than using proprietary Unix on a mainframe, Penguin Computing developed around an x86 platform running Linux.

Being acquired by Penguin Computing, which offers everything from workstations to high-end cluster servers, will enable Scyld to hone its software for the Penguin Computing platform, Becker said.

“This is a really good match in terms of philosophy,” he said, adding that he also hopes Scythe will expand its support of the Linux and Beowulf communities.

“Linux is taking over the world,” he said, with a laugh.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The deal will be final soon, Becker said.