Continuing Innovation in Information Technology (2012)
Chapter: Appendix B: Transfers of Ideas and People and Impacts Since 2003 Added to Figure 1
Transfers of Ideas and People and Other
Impacts Since 2003 Added to Figure 1
Table B.1 gives some examples of the many transfers of ideas and people and other impacts that occurred as the fields of computing and communications progressed, and it provides annotation for events depicted by arrows in Figure 1. It is not meant to be a comprehensive description of the history of the research in any of the areas listed.
TABLE B.1 Transfers and Other Impacts Since 2003 as Indicated by the New Arrows Added to Figure 1
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Research Track and Events |
Origins |
Impact |
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Digital Communications |
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Multiple-input and multiple-output |
Closely related university research pre-1996; industry R&D (Bell Labs BLAST) in 1998 |
A fundamental enabler in today’s wireless communications, including WiFi, WiMax, 4G, LTE, and others |
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Radio-frequency complementary metal-oxide semiconductor integrated circuits |
Basic research and some serious engineering efforts in universities throughout the 1990s |
The foundational device technology for WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, and others |
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Wireless locating |
Industry R&D in the early 2000s, with subsequent university research |
Fundamental to some wireless systems, and an energy-saving supplement to GPS for mobile devices; now a foundation for growing location-based services |
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Bluetooth |
Ericsson and open SIG 1994, with participation by industry and university; based on earlier research in spread-spectrum radio |
Now the industry standard for very-short-range secure networking; used primarily for local connectivity of devices |
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MACA channel access protocol |
University and industry research starting in 1990 and continuing to 2000s |
The foundation for collision avoidance on shared physical network links, particularly for wireless networks |
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Computer Architecture |
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Adaptive branch predictors |
Two-level adaptive branch predictors started in academic research around 1992 |
Significant influence on subsequent research, as well as influence on modern processor designs |
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Memory-dependence predictors |
Both university and industrial research, emerging in practical form around 1996-1997 |
Fundamental to enabling aggressive out-of-order execution in practice, affecting research in compilers and architectures, and commercial products |
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Multicore |
Early university-based developments, such as Stanford Hydra and MIT RAW, circa 2002; later, industry R&D such as Sun’s Niagara, around 2005 |
Fundamental to all processor architectures on the market today; furthermore, the problems of parallel computing have become central in research |
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Stream-based image-processing architectures |
University-based research on stream-processing for image and signal processing, leading to developments such as Imagine, circa 2002 |
The foundation for today’s GPUs; today there is considerable research and commercial development on applications that go far beyond graphics processing |
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Graphical processing unit in iPhone |
Industry 2007 |
Present in mobile computers for some time, now considered de rigueur, given the user-experience advantages demonstrated by the iPad/iPhone |
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Advances in parallel computing applied to commercial product development |
Continued university work on parallel computing in 2000s and earlier |
Collaboration by top computer architecture researchers in academia and movement between the university and industry communities |
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Research Track and Events |
Origins |
Impact |
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Software Technologies |
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Modern virtual machines |
A long history of university research, with recent practical developments such as DISCO in 1997, and companies like VMware in 1998 |
A fundamental building block of cloud technology, allowing more effective provisioning of data-center services and security |
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Modern buffer overrun protections |
Universities and industry throughout the 2000s |
Operating systems starting to incorporate dynamic methods for improving security |
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Web 2.0 |
Industry, 2004 |
A fundamental shift in thinking in the operating system research community, as a new layer of distributed application infrastructure emerges |
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Multitouch appears in iPhone |
Industry, 2007 |
New research thrusts in gesture-based user interfaces and some re-thinking of system architectures |
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Kinect |
Industry, 2010 |
Originally designed as a game controller, then adopted by researchers as a new core sensor for many applications |
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Networking |
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Content distribution networks |
Early foundations developed in universities, contributing algorithms, systems concepts, and people to companies such as Akamai, 1998 |
A fundamental part of how the Internet works, essential to provision of services such as YouTube, news sites, and many others |
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Multiprotocol label switching |
Early developments in companies such as Ipsilon Networks, circa 1996 |
Had a fundamental influence on subsequent university research in networking |
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GigaScope and others |
Industry and university research, in particular AT&T Labs around 2003 |
Stream-based measurement and traffic analysis on large networks (and the Internet)—a fundamental tool for today’s research |
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OpenFlow |
Stanford University, 2008 |
Issued as a standard in 2011 |
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Parallel and Distributed Systems |
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Map-Reduce |
Fundamental ideas date back to the 1960s, but made practical at scale by Google in 2004 |
Changed the research thinking in distributed computing; a foundation for many cloud systems |
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Hadoop |
Open-source development, around 2006 |
Had immediate influence on university research, including not only distributed systems but also areas such as machine learning and databases; increasingly the base for commercial offerings |
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Message passing interface |
A university and industry standards development, around 1994 |
The standard mechanism for programming high-performance computers |
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Research Track and Events |
Origins |
Impact |
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Parallel and Distributed Systems |
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Parallel virtual machine |
Originated at Oakridge National Laboratory and university around 1990-1991 |
A key foundation for programming a networked collection of computers as a single system, for both research and practical applications |
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Peer-to-peer |
Open community, picking up steam around 2004 |
Significant influence on a wide variety of widely used systems, such as Skype |
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Databases |
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Researchers leave Stanford to found Google |
University to start-up, 1998 |
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Data integration technologies |
University and industry R&D throughout the 2000s |
Fundamental impact on the “big data” movement, as seen in technologies such as Google Fusion Tables (2009) |
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Data-stream management systems |
Industry R&D in the early 2000s |
A key driver and enabler for both research and commercial developments in “big data” |
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XML |
Broad community process in 1997; earlier SGML late 1980s |
A key foundation for representation of online content on the Web and other IT-based systems |
| Computer Graphics | ||
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Poisson image editing |
Industry R&D, 2003 |
A major advance in image editing, now a core of image-processing tools (like Photoshop) and associated algorithms |
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Image stitching |
Industry and university research, circa 2005 |
Omnipresent, from its use in mapping services (e.g., Google Maps) to modern filmmaking and panorama features in cameras |
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Spherical harmonic shading |
Universities, around 2002 |
A major advance in (relatively) low-overhead realistic shading and shadowing in computer graphics |
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LightStage real-time capture |
Universities (especially University of Southern California), in 2002 |
A foundation for today’s digital image capture, used widely with particular impact in moviemaking and recognized recently with an Academy Award |
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Stable fluids and related methods |
Universities, around 1999 |
The core of all image and video rendering for realistic smoke, water, and so on |
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Disney/Pixar labs |
Industry-university partnership, in 2007 |
Similar to the Intel “lablet” model, for closer collaboration between industry and university research |
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Research Track and Events |
Origins |
Impact |
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AI and Robotics |
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Incremental heuristic search |
Universities, around 2004 |
A building block for a wide array of data mining and search technologies, as well as a foundation for basic research |
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Hidden Markov models for biology, speech, and the like |
University and industry R&D throughout the 1990s |
A major step in the general reduction of problems outside of core computing (genomics, speech processing, and so on) to algorithmic problems |
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Recommender systems |
University and industry R&D, circa 1994 |
A core element of today’s e-commerce systems |
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Bayesian methods applied |
University and industry R&D throughout the 1990s |
Fundamental to the major shift toward more statistical approaches to machine intelligence |
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Kinect audio and vision |
Microsoft, 2010 |
The most rapidly adopted consumer electronics device of all time |
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