Grider named a 2025 HPCwire Legend

‘Godfather of parallel file systems’ holds numerous patents

In his work to advance storage technologies, Gary Grider interacts with chief technology officers at dozens of computing industry companies. Credit to: Los Alamos National Laboratory

Gary Grider, senior director for computing at Los Alamos National Laboratory, was recently celebrated as a “Legend” by the HPCwire news platform, which covers the world’s fastest computers. In its second annual list, editors and advisers recognized “pioneering researchers, visionary inventors and influential executives” who’ve propelled technological breakthroughs and commercial successes in the high-performance computing field. What he did: Known in some circles as “the godfather of parallel file systems,” Grider was honored for driving or co-inventing many of the storage technologies that form the backbone of today’s supercomputing centers. He holds 30 data management and storage patents. Of note: With Nvidia, HPE, SK hynix, Cray and Intel, Grider and his team led the co-design of hardware architectures and infrastructure solutions for the Venado and Crossroads supercomputers at Los Alamos, plus earlier machines including Thinking Machines’ Connection Machine 2 (CM-2), Blue Mountain, and Q. Grider is currently working to establish an international community seeking worldwide acceptance of parallel network file system (NFS) architecture. He sat on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Reynold B. Johnson Storage Systems Award committee for several years. LA-UR-25-30295

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