Systems Seminar: Dr. Greg Papadopoulos, Chief Technology Officer, Sun Microsystems

Billions and Billions of Devices Served: Fundamental Challenges for the Network Age

Abstract

What does a predictable and secure, global network supporting billions of devices look like? How do we really get to "dialtone" levels of reliability and ease-of-use? This talk will take a provocative look at the evolution of inter-networking. The thesis is that our current view of the Internet as a big packet switch will markedly shift as a whole variety of services become an integral part of the 'net. The pressures behind this shift: (1) the needs of mobile and wireless devices, (2) the desires of enterprises to outsource networking infrastructure, and (3) the watershed of high bandwidth to the home. I'll conclude by speculating how the services-oriented view will change the competitive interdependences of network equipment providers, computing equipment providers, and telecommunications companies.

Speaker Bio

As Chief Technology Officer of Sun Microsystems, Inc., Dr. Greg Papadopoulos is responsible for assessing Sun's technological investments, as well as directing the activities of Sun Laboratories and associated advanced development programs. At Sun, Greg has held senior positions as Vice President of Technology and Advanced Development for SMCC, and Chief Scientist for Server Systems Engineering and then the Enterprise Servers and Storage business unit within SMCC. Greg joined Sun in the Fall of 1994 from Thinking Machines where he was Senior Architect and Director of Product Strategy and also an Associate Professor at MIT. At MIT, he conducted research on scalable systems and fault-tolerant computing. He was a development engineer at Hewlett-Packard and Honeywell and cofounded three companies: PictureTel, Ergo and Exa Corporation. Greg received a BA in systems science from UCSD and his MS and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT.