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12.June.2006 -- For the past 15 years, researchers at Sun Labs have delved into some
of the most complex technical challenges in computing, resulting in
a body of work second to none in the industry. Many of Sun's
accomplishments, including the development of Java, the
comprehensive superiority of Solaris, UltraSPARC II and III, the
UltraSPARC T1 processor, and the Sun Grid, derive from the
talent and dedication of the world-class research engineers working
inside Sun Labs. Their efforts to develop revolutionary technical
and business solutions for real problems encountered by Sun
customers around the globe have improved performance and efficiency,
from processors and systems to the top of the software stack, giving
Sun customers definitive competitive advantages in all aspects of
network computing.
To recognize the strength of Sun Labs 15 years of innovation, we've
chosen 15 researchers whose vision and willingness to pursue
difficult and sometimes unpopular lines of research have have
contributed much to the success of Sun and Sun Labs over the past 15
years. Some are in Sun Labs today, some have moved on to other parts
of Sun and some have returned to Labs after spending time working on
various products.
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John Busch, Principal Investigator and Director at Sun Labs: Busch
is the principal investigator and director of Sun Labs' Computer
Architecture and Performance Program, which is responsible for
exploring breakaway system architectures for Sun's computer markets
including Sun's Opteron system designs and the Niagara architecture,
based on quantified analysis and collaboration with multiple
business units.
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Sheueling Chang, Distinguished Engineer, Sun Labs: Chang led Next
Generation Crypto team which developed Sun's cryptographic hardware
accelerator as well as the Elliptic Curve Cryptography libraries now
incorporated into Sun's JES product stack, and available to external
developers through Open SSL. Netscape Security Services (NSS)
version 3.8 and later also include a downloadable version of Sun's
ECC cryptosystem. Holding both a PhD in Computer Science from
California Institute of Technology. and a Master in Business
Management from Stanford Business School, Chang is currently pursuing
research on a an electronic payment system based on Elliptic Curve
Cryptosystems. |
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Whitfield Diffie, Sun Fellow and Chief Security Officer: Diffie leads
Sun's extensive effort in the critical disciplines of security and
cryptography. Best known for his 1975 discovery of public key
cryptography, he has testified before Congress on several occasions
in opposition to limits on business or personal use of cryptography.
With Susan Landau, he co-authored the book "Privacy on the Line,"
which examines the politics of wiretapping and encryption.
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Hans Eberle, Distinguished Engineer, Sun Labs: Currently leading the
Next-Generation Switch project in Sun Labs exploring technologies and
architectures for large-scale data center switches, Eberle came to
Sun Labs in 1998 from ETH, Zurich, where he was an Assistant
Professor. Eberle was part of the Next Generation Crypto team, which
developed Sun's cryptographic hardware accelerator and the Elliptic
Curve Cryptography libraries now incorporated into Sun's JES product
stack.
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James Gosling, Sun Fellow and Chief Technology Officer for Sun's
Developer Products Group: Gosling invented the Java Programming
Language and implemented its original compiler and virtual machine.
He also helped develop a variety of data-acquisition systems, a
multiprocessor version of Unix, several compilers, mail systems and
window managers. In and out of Sun Labs several times in his career
at Sun, James is currently part of Sun's Software business unit.
James has contributed to the Real-Time Specification for Java as well
as building a variety of software development tools.
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Susan Landau, Distinguished Engineer,Sun Labs: Landau's recent work
has focused on the interaction between security and public policy.
She is a member of the National Institute of Standards and
Technology's Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board. Her
background includes extensive research on cryptography, export
control, surveillance and digital-rights management, Landau and
Whitfield Diffie co-authored "Privacy on the Line", which examines
the politics of wiretapping and encryption.
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Jim Mitchell, Sun Fellow and VP, currently driving Sun's High
Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) Research and Development
Program. Funded by a three-year, $50 million grant from the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the HPCS project has just
submitted a proposal for DARPA Phase III of a hardware and software
total system design for building next generation supercomputers.
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Radia Perlman, Distinguished Engineer, Sun Labs: Inventor of the
Spanning Tree algorithm, inventor of the spanning tree algorithm used
by bridges, and the mechanisms that make modern link state protocols
efficient and robust. Perlman has made vast contributions to the
structure and function of the internet and has authored
"Interconnections: Bridges and Routers", and co-authored "Network
Security: Private Communication in a Public World", two of the top 10
Networking reference books.
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Dick Sillman, Senior Director, Sun Labs: Sillman conceived, designed,
tested and shipped a number of innovative products including a
multiprocessor SPARC chipset, several embedded processor boards and
the world's first desktop RISC workstation. He led the development of
Project Honeycomb, an innovative storage system offering low-cost,
high-availability and autonomous management, recently transferred to
Sun's Storage business unit. His current research is focused
developing a set of next-generation set top boxes which double as
thin clients.
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Bob Sproull, Sun Fellow, VP and Director of Sun Labs: Sproull
founded and led the Massachusetts branch of Sun Labs for more than
10 years. His extensive endeavors include developing cutting-edge
hardware and software used for computer graphics, clipping hardware,
page description languages, laser printing and early device-
independent graphics packages. He co-authored "Logical Effort," a
text focussing on the challenges of developing high-speed CMOS circuits.
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Guy Steele, Sun Fellow, Distinguished Engineer, Sun Labs: Steele and
his Programming Language Research team are looking at how to apply
the lessons learned from the Java (TM) Programming Language to the
next generation of programming languages. Steele was part of the
group that wrote the original Java Language Specification.
Additional research interests include algorithms, compilation,
distributed systems, high-performance computing, operating systems
and supercomputers.
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Ivan Sutherland, Sun Fellow and Vice President of Sun Labs: Dividing
his time this year between Sun Labs and teaching in the Engineering
Department at UC Berkeley, Sutherland is part of the VLSI Research
Project, working to develop high-speed CMOS and Asynchronous
circuits. One of the founders of Sun Labs, Ivan came to Sun after
serving as Chairman of the Computer Science Department at California
Institute of Technology.
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Jim Waldo, Distinguished Engineer, Sun Labs: Waldo currently serves
as the principle investigator of the Neuromancer Project,
an investigation into large-scale distributed computing based on a
wide deployment of sensors and actuators. The project is currently
focused on building an infrastructure for wide-scale medical sensing,
which might be used by health care officials to identify disturbing
trends and diagnoses before they become widespread pandemics. Waldo
was the lead architect for Jini, a distributed programming system
based on Java.
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Mario Wolczko, Distinguished Engineeer, Sun Labs: An early member
(1993) of Sun Labs, Wolczko's wide-ranging research interests and
accomplishments include object object-oriented programming language
design and usage, the implementation of virtual machines (in both
hardware and software), memory system design and management
(including garbage collection) and the co-design of virtual machines
and hardware architectures. Wolczko is currently pursuing research
in computer architectures for object-based systems.
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Bill Woods, Distinguished Engineer, Sun Labs: An early member of Sun
Labs, Bill is the creator of "Conceptual Indexing", and the body of
work in natural language technology and precision content retreival
which provide the foundation for the research done by the Sun Labs
Knowledge Technology group into Enterprise, Music and Video search.
Woods' current explorations are in the field of multimedia on the web
- Media Web 2.0
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