Benoit Schillings is a Belgian

software engineer Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...

who is

vice president A vice president or vice-president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vi ...

of technology at

Google DeepMind DeepMind Technologies Limited, trading as Google DeepMind or simply DeepMind, is a British–American artificial intelligence research laboratory which serves as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Founded in the UK in 2010, it was acquired by Goo ...

. He was previously the chief technology officer at

Google X X Development LLC, doing business as X (formerly Google X), is an American semi-secret research and development facility and organization founded by Google in January 2010. X has its headquarters about a mile and a half from Google's corporate ...

leading early projects. He is known for being one of the lead developers of the Be Operating System (BeOS) and is a noted amateur astronomer.

Career

Schillings' association with

Be Inc. Be Inc. was an American computer company that created and developed the BeOS and BeIA operating systems, and the BeBox personal computer. It was founded in 1990 by former Apple Inc., Apple Computer executive Jean-Louis Gassée, who also served a ...

began in 1990 when, as a developer of software for the

Apple Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

, he visited the

Apple Expo The Apple Expo was a European annual sales conference and technology exposition held by Apple Inc. The conference featured over 250 exhibitors annually, with Apple being its main exhibitor. This conference was most often viewed as the European c ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

and met

Jean-Louis Gassée Jean-Louis Gassée (born 24 March 1944) is a business executive. He is best known as a former executive at Apple Computer, where he worked from 1981 to 1990. He also founded Be Inc., creators of the BeOS computer operating system. After leavin ...

. Gassée, who had just left

Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Co ...

to found Be, asked Schillings to become the second engineer at Be where he would work on the operating system for a new computer called the

BeBox The BeBox is a discontinued personal computer from Be Inc., running the company's operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), s ...

. Schillings accepted the offer and, starting in March 1991, developed a file system (now known as the Old Be File System or OFS) and an associated user-space database application (called Zookeeper) that indexed the metadata in the file system. The file system was fast and efficient, but was later replaced by Dominic Giampaolo's

Be File System The Be File System (BFS) is the native file system for the BeOS. In the Linux kernel, it is referred to as "BeFS" to avoid confusion with Boot File System. BFS was developed by Dominic Giampaolo and Cyril Meurillon over a ten-month period, st ...

. Schillings also developed the graphics system for BeOS (known as the App Server), as well as programming frameworks such as the Interface Kit and Application Kit that are used by

software developer Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...

s to write software for the operating system. Before joining Trolltech in October 2005, Schillings worked as a "Distinguished Engineer" and CTO at

Openwave Openwave Systems Inc. (formerly software.com, phone.com, and Libris, Inc.) is a division of Enea. It provides video traffic management and 5G mobile products. Two of Openwave's former products launched as private companies; Openwave Mobility ...

where, with Mike Reed, he led a team that developed Version 7 of the Openwave Phone Suite

mobile phone A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This rad ...

applications. Benoit also ran the Android and iOS mobile teams at Yahoo from 2013 until 2017.

References

External links

Be Engineering Insights: Benaphores
First implementation of futex
Benoit Schillings's page
on telescope images. {{DEFAULTSORT:Schillings, Benoit Be Inc. people Living people Chief technology officers Year of birth missing (living people)

Career

See also

References

External links