AUSTIN, Texas — Bob Metcalfe, professor emeritus in the Chandra Spouse and children Division of Electrical and Pc Engineering at The College of Texas at Austin, was named the recipient of the 2022 Affiliation for Computing Equipment (ACM) A.M. Turing Award for the invention, standardization and commercialization of Ethernet.
The ACM A.M. Turing Award, typically called the “Nobel Prize of computing,” contains a $1 million prize, with economical assist furnished by Google. The award is named for Alan M. Turing, the British mathematician who articulated the mathematical foundations of computing.
“It is hazardous to settle for an award for building Ethernet, which turns 50 on May possibly 22, 2023,” Metcalfe said. “Over Ethernet’s 50 years, hundreds of people have earned some claim of inventorship. Sign up for me in indicating to these folks, ‘Thank you.’”
Prior to retiring from UT Austin in 2021, Metcalfe led innovation initiatives in the Cockrell University of Engineering and throughout campus for a ten years. He is the founding director of the Texas Innovation Heart, which released in 2011 to assistance school associates and learners bring their scientific and engineering discoveries to market. He envisioned aiding Austin develop into a superior version of Silicon Valley.
“Bob has produced several vital contributions to the tech market. His invention of Ethernet revolutionized how all people interacts with personal computers and every other,” mentioned Roger Bonnecaze, dean of the Cockrell School of Engineering. “This prestigious award is very very well-deserved certainly!”
During his time at UT, Metcalfe was a fixture as a speaker and adviser for entrepreneurial teams and activities across campus. He was a important component of Longhorn Startup, a drop course that presents pupils an prospect to hear from entrepreneurs and then pitch their individual assignments. And he made a startup studio and salons within the Cockrell College to assist professors and pupils sharpen their startup tips.
In 1973, even though a laptop scientist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Middle (PARC), Metcalfe circulated a now-renowned memo describing a “broadcast interaction network” for connecting some of the to start with individual pcs, PARC’s Altos, within a setting up. The very first Ethernet ran at 2.94 megabits for each next, which was about 10,000 instances as fast as the terminal networks it would substitute.
Even though Metcalfe’s first style proposed implementing this community around coaxial cable, the memo envisioned “communication over an ether,” making the structure adaptable to future innovations in media know-how which includes legacy phone twisted pair, optical fiber, radio (Wi-Fi), and even electrical power networks, to exchange the coaxial cable as the “ether.” That memo laid the groundwork for what we now know now as Ethernet.
Metcalfe’s Ethernet style integrated insights from his expertise with ALOHAnet, a pioneering computer networking system created at the University of Hawaii. Metcalfe recruited David Boggs, a co-inventor of Ethernet, to support create a 100-node PARC Ethernet. That very first Ethernet was then replicated inside of Xerox to proliferate a company online.
In their seminal 1976 Communications of the ACM article, “Ethernet: Distributed Packet Switching for Regional Computer Networks,” Metcalfe and Boggs described the structure of Ethernet. Metcalfe then led a group that designed the 10 Mbps Ethernet to form the foundation of subsequent benchmarks.
“Ethernet was the plumbing upgrade the internet necessary in the 1970s,” Metcalfe said. “Ethernet enabled the changeover from Arpanet, a community of time-shared pcs servicing dumb terminals, to an internetwork of personalized computer systems, their servers, and routers.”
Now, Ethernet is the key conduit of wired community communications all over the earth, managing knowledge prices from 10 Mbps to 400 Gbps, with 800 Gbps and 1.6 Tbps technologies rising. Ethernet has also develop into an great marketplace, with income from Ethernet switches alone exceeding $30 billion in 2021, in accordance to the International Details Company. Understand additional about Metcalfe and his get the job done on Ethernet.
