Like many new technologies, the Linux operating system got its big break in high performance computing. There is a symbiotic relationship between Linux and HPC that seems natural and normal today, and the Linux Foundation, which is the steward of the Linux kernel and other important open source projects – and, importantly, the place where Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, gets his paycheck – thinks that Linux was more than a phenomenon on HPC iron. The organization goes so far as to say that Linux helped spawn the massive expansion in supercomputing capacity we have seen in the past two decades.
