About Sun Labs

At Sun, research and development is an important business function that differentiates us from our competitors. Execution is important but innovation is key.

Sun's commitment to R&D is a driving factor in the development of technologies that have kept Sun at the forefront of the computer industry. Although many of Sun's great technologies originate in its product development organizations, Sun Microsystems Laboratories (Sun Labs) is the sole organization that is devoted exclusively to research.

Sun Labs' primary mission is to anticipate, create and realize new technical options for Sun. Compared to product engineering, we take on projects that are longer-term and riskier. As we formulate and work on projects, we are constantly asking ourselves how a project's success can help a Sun business. We are an "applied" research lab.

Our secondary mission is to be the "eyes and ears" for Sun by forming links outside Sun to the technical and research resources of our industry. We do this so that Sun can learn from work done elsewhere, so that we are abreast of technologies and trends outside Sun, and so that we can hire bright researchers with fresh ideas.

Sun Labs recognizes the value of collaborations, and actively pursues cooperative research programs with universities, research institutions and independent teams. Sun Labs regularly engages with researchers around the world through collaborative research agreements, visiting research positions, invited lecture series and an active Intern program with between 30 and 50 interns working on research projects every year.

Sun Labs Research Strategy
Sun Labs researchers look for novel approaches and methodologies, and can take on projects with high risk or uncertainty. However, Sun Labs research is not done just for the sake of exploration, but to develop technologies that will someday play a significant role in the evolution of technology and society. For example, chip multithreading grew out of architectural and modeling work done in Sun Labs.

Current Sun Labs research projects include explorations into:

• Expansion and enhancement of the Java™ Technology Platform
• Reliable, highly distributed, large scale storage
• Programming languages of the future
• High-speed circuit technologies and design methods
• Proximity Communication
• Next Generation Distributed Systems
• Security for the Network and the Internet
• Collaboration tools for distributed work
• A management architecture for the Inernet of Things
• Wireless Sensors
• Mathematical techniques to solve business problems

Sun Labs Technology Transfer (TT) and Open Source
Since its inception in 1991, Sun Labs has been responsible for many of Sun's technology advancements and inventions, maintaining one of the highest rates of technology transfer in the industry. However, current modes of technology transfer are very different from the TT paradigm of Innovate, Demonstrate, Transfer that was the standard in Sun Labs' earlier years. Today's TT happens in a very interactive way, and a much more open way.

Inside Sun, as a Sun Labs project evolves and technology is developed, Sun Labs researchers spend a considerable amount of time actively working with Sun product groups to transfer knowledge and technology into Sun products and processes. Interactions can be initiated either by pull from a product group who need help with an intractable problem, or by push from a Labs researcher who recognizes an opportunity for product/technology improvement.

Outside Sun, technology is increasingly transferred through collaborative interactions or Open Source websites and communities. Several Sun Labs projects - Fortress, Darkstar, Wonderland and Sun SPOT - have large active communities which engage researchers on many levels. Participation ranges from suggestions for improvement through code submissions back to the communities, to active utilization of binaries as they are released to develop applications - interactive worlds (Wonderland), games (Darkstar), sensor/actuator applications (Sun SPOTs).

University collaboration is also an important means of technology transfer. These collaborations range from our highly popular Sun Labs intern program, through grants of Sun systems for research purposes, to personal collaborations between Sun Labs researchers and university professors and students. A recent and extremely successful collaboration between the Project Squawk team of Eric Arseneau and Derek White and resulted in the porting of the Squawk Java VM to the National Instruments CompactRIO robotics controller, bringing Java to the highly popular First Robotics program.

Sun Labs researchers also transfer technology to the wider scientific and technical community by publishing in industry, academic and technical jour nals and at equivalent level conferences. The Sun Labs web site contains archives of technical papers and abstracts covering research conducted by Sun Labs staff.

Sun Labs researchers are recognized by their peers as leaders in their fields. Recognition of this excellence has come in the form of national awards for ground-breaking technologies, individual innovation, and best papers at conferences. A list of the Sun Labs award-winning researchers is available.

Sun Labs is also a prolific generator of US patents. Although Sun Labs re searchers are a small percentage of Sun Microsystems' total engineering staff, they account for approximately 12 per cent of the yearly patents awarded to Sun.

Research doesn't come free . . .
Sun Labs is supported directly from Sun's operating budget, not by the individual Sun business units. This insures that Labs has the freedom to take a risk on a project which appears, at first glance, to have no direct relevance to Sun's business. For example, in the early 1990's very few people thought the world needed a new object-oriented software technology, but the Java language has emerged as an industry standard for "Write Once, Run Anywhere™" software.

Sun Labs Organizations
Based at Sun headquarters in Menlo Park, CA, Sun Labs also has a research center in Boston, Massachusetts, and individual researchers work from remote locations all over the world. The geographic spread allows Sun Labs to take advantage of a tremendous pool of scientific and engineering talent and enables Labs' people to collaborate with other researchers from a wide range of industries and universities.