Currently he is the Chief Technology Officer at Ceranovo, Inc.[2] He was the Chief Graphics Product Architect and Senior Fellow at AMD from September 2012 until June 2013,[3][4] and he previously held the positions of Architect of Intel Labs-SC,[5] CEO of Massively Parallel Technologies, Inc.[6] and CTO at ClearSpeed Technology.

[7] Gustafson holds applied mathematics degrees from the California Institute of Technology and Iowa State University.

His mother was an electronics technician at Collins Radio and his father was a chemical engineer turned MD, both as a result of World War II.

Assembling radio transmitters, designing and executing chemistry experiments, and making holograms are some of his favorite childhood explorations.

[10] In 1988, Gustafson was the recipient of the inaugural Gordon Bell Prize.