AUSTIN, Texas — Bob Metcalfe, professor emeritus in the Chandra Household Department of Electrical and Pc Engineering at The College of Texas at Austin, was named the receiver of the 2022 Affiliation for Computing Machinery (ACM) A.M. Turing Award for the creation, standardization and commercialization of Ethernet.
The ACM A.M. Turing Award, often named the “Nobel Prize of computing,” features a $1 million prize, with economical aid supplied by Google. The award is named for Alan M. Turing, the British mathematician who articulated the mathematical foundations of computing.
“It is unsafe to acknowledge an award for establishing Ethernet, which turns 50 on May perhaps 22, 2023,” Metcalfe reported. “Over Ethernet’s 50 several years, hundreds of folks have attained some claim of inventorship. Be part of me in declaring to these folks, ‘Thank you.’”
Just before retiring from UT Austin in 2021, Metcalfe led innovation initiatives in the Cockrell School of Engineering and throughout campus for a ten years. He is the founding director of the Texas Innovation Center, which launched in 2011 to assistance school customers and learners deliver their scientific and engineering discoveries to market place. He envisioned aiding Austin grow to be a superior version of Silicon Valley.
“Bob has produced various critical contributions to the tech market. His invention of Ethernet revolutionized how every person interacts with personal computers and each other,” explained Roger Bonnecaze, dean of the Cockrell School of Engineering. “This prestigious award is incredibly very well-deserved indeed!”
For the duration of his time at UT, Metcalfe was a fixture as a speaker and adviser for entrepreneurial groups and activities throughout campus. He was a significant part of Longhorn Startup, a slide study course that presents college students an possibility to listen to from business people and then pitch their have assignments. And he established a startup studio and salons in the Cockrell University to assist professors and pupils sharpen their startup tips.
In 1973, although a personal computer scientist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Middle (PARC), Metcalfe circulated a now-popular memo describing a “broadcast communication network” for connecting some of the initial personalized computer systems, PARC’s Altos, inside a making. The initial Ethernet ran at 2.94 megabits per 2nd, which was about 10,000 times as quick as the terminal networks it would exchange.
Whilst Metcalfe’s first style and design proposed utilizing this network above coaxial cable, the memo envisioned “communication above an ether,” making the structure adaptable to foreseeable future improvements in media technological know-how which include legacy phone twisted pair, optical fiber, radio (Wi-Fi), and even electricity networks, to swap the coaxial cable as the “ether.” That memo laid the groundwork for what we now know currently as Ethernet.
Metcalfe’s Ethernet design incorporated insights from his knowledge with ALOHAnet, a pioneering computer networking system produced at the University of Hawaii. Metcalfe recruited David Boggs, a co-inventor of Ethernet, to enable construct a 100-node PARC Ethernet. That to start with Ethernet was then replicated inside Xerox to proliferate a corporate net.
In their seminal 1976 Communications of the ACM report, “Ethernet: Dispersed Packet Switching for Regional Computer system Networks,” Metcalfe and Boggs explained the layout of Ethernet. Metcalfe then led a staff that formulated the 10 Mbps Ethernet to form the basis of subsequent benchmarks.
“Ethernet was the plumbing enhance the world-wide-web needed in the 1970s,” Metcalfe reported. “Ethernet enabled the changeover from Arpanet, a network of time-shared pcs servicing dumb terminals, to an internetwork of personal computer systems, their servers, and routers.”
Today, Ethernet is the most important conduit of wired network communications around the planet, handling information prices from 10 Mbps to 400 Gbps, with 800 Gbps and 1.6 Tbps technologies emerging. Ethernet has also become an monumental current market, with revenue from Ethernet switches by itself exceeding $30 billion in 2021, in accordance to the Intercontinental Info Corporation. Master additional about Metcalfe and his perform on Ethernet.
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