Bob Metcalfe wins Turing Award

ACM TURING AWARD HONORS BOB METCALFE FOR ETHERNET

Technology Developed 50 Years Ago Remains the Dominant Plot of Connecting Pc techniques and Billions of Other Devices to Every Other and the Web 

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, this day named Bob Metcalfe as recipient of the 2022 ACM A.M. Turing Award for the invention, standardization, and commercialization of Ethernet.

Metcalfe is an Emeritus Professor of Electrical and Pc Engineering (ECE) at The College of Texas at Austin and a Study Affiliate in Computational Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Pc Science & Man made Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

The ACM A.M. Turing Award, in overall typically called the “Nobel Prize in Computing,” carries a $1 million prize, with financial improve provided by Google, Inc. The Award is named for Alan M. Turing, the British mathematician who articulated the mathematical foundations of computing.

Invention of The Ethernet

In 1973, whereas a computer scientist at the Xerox Palo Alto Study Center (PARC), Metcalfe circulated a now-successfully-known memo describing a “broadcast communication network” for connecting one of the necessary first internal most computer techniques, PARC’s Altos, within a constructing. The fundamental Ethernet ran at 2.94 megabits per 2d, which became as soon as about 10,000 cases sooner than the terminal networks it could well maybe well replace.

Even though Metcalfe’s customary create proposed enforcing this network over coaxial cable, the memo envisioned “communication over an ether,” making the create adaptable to future enhancements in media expertise including legacy phone bent pair, optical fiber, radio (Wi-Fi), and even vitality networks, to interchange the coaxial cable because the “ether.” That memo laid the groundwork for what we now know this day as Ethernet.

Metcalfe’s Ethernet create incorporated insights from his trip with ALOHAnet, a pioneering computer networking machine developed at the College of Hawaii. Metcalfe recruited David Boggs (d. 2022), a co-inventor of Ethernet, to wait on procure a 100-node PARC Ethernet. That first Ethernet became as soon as then replicated within Xerox to proliferate a company web.

In their classic 1976 Communications of the ACM article, “Ethernet: Dispensed Packet Switching for Native Pc Networks,” Metcalfe and Boggs described the create of Ethernet. Metcalfe then led a team that developed the 10Mbps Ethernet to create the foundation of subsequent standards.

Standardization and Commercialization

After leaving Xerox in 1979, Metcalfe remained the executive evangelist for Ethernet and endured to files its kind whereas working to procure definite commerce adoption of an open customary. He led an effort by Digital Instruments Company (DEC), Intel, and Xerox to construct a 10Mbps Ethernet specification—the DIX customary. The IEEE 802 committee became as soon as formed to set a native home network (LAN) customary. A puny variant of DIX grew to turn into the first IEEE 802.3 customary, which is mute shiny this day.

Because the founding father of his have Silicon Valley Web startup, 3Com Company, in 1979, Metcalfe bolstered the industrial charm of Ethernet by selling network instrument, Ethernet transceivers, and Ethernet playing cards for minicomputers and workstations. When IBM launched its internal most computer (PC), 3Com launched one amongst the first Ethernet interfaces for IBM PCs and their proliferating clones.

This day, Ethernet is the fundamental conduit of wired network communications staunch by the world, coping with files charges from 10 Mbps to 400 Gbps, with 800 Gbps and 1.6 Tbps technologies rising. Ethernet has also turn into an huge market, with earnings from Ethernet switches on my own exceeding $30 billion in 2021, essentially based totally on the International Records Company.

Metcalfe insists on calling Wi-Fi by its customary name, Wi-fi Ethernet, for ancient cases’ sake.

“Ethernet has been the dominant procedure of connecting computer techniques to other devices, to every other, and to the Web,” explains ACM President Yannis Ioannidis. “Metcalfe’s customary create tips possess enabled the bandwidth of Ethernet to develop geometrically. It is uncommon to evaluate a expertise scale from its origins to this day’s multigigabit-per-2d ability. Even with the advent of WiFi, Ethernet remains the staple mode of files communication, especially when safety and reliability are prioritized. It is especially becoming to acknowledge such an impactful invention at some level of its 50^th anniversary year.”

“Ethernet is the foundational expertise of the Web, which supports better than 5 billion users and permits great of standard existence,” added Jeff Dean, Google Senior Fellow and SVP of Google Study and AI. “This day, with an estimated 7 billion ports staunch by the globe, Ethernet is so ubiquitous that we rob it without a consideration. It’s easy to neglect that our interconnected world would now not be the identical if now not for Bob Metcalfe’s invention and his enduring imaginative and prescient that every computer wished to be networked.”

Metcalfe will almost certainly be formally introduced with the ACM A.M. Turing Award at the annual ACM Awards Feast, which is able to be held this year on Saturday, June 10 at the Palace Resort in San Francisco.

Biographical Background

Robert Melancton Metcalfe is Emeritus Professor of Electrical and Pc Engineering (ECE) after 11 years at The College of Texas at Austin. He has lately turn staunch into a Study Affiliate in Computational Engineering at his alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Pc Science & Man made Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

Metcalfe graduated from MIT in 1969 with Bachelor levels in Electrical Engineering and Industrial Management. He earned a Grasp’s level in Applied Arithmetic in 1970 and a PhD in Pc Science in 1973 from Harvard College.

Metcalfe’s honors consist of the National Medal of Technology, IEEE Medal of Honor, Marconi Prize, Japan Pc & Communications Prize, ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, and IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal. He’s a Fellow of the US National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Inventors, User Electronics, and Web Halls of Reputation.

The A.M. Turing Award, the ACM’s most prestigious technical award, is given for fundamental contributions of lasting importance to computing.

This space celebrates all of the winners for the rationale that award’s advent in 1966. It contains biographical files, a description of their accomplishments, straightforward explanations of their fields of specialization, and text or video of their A. M. Turing Award Lecture.