Bob Metcalfe wins Turing Award

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today named Bob Metcalfe as recipient of the 2022 ACM A.M. Turing Award for the invention, standardization, and commercialization of Ethernet. Metcalfe recruited David Boggs, a co-inventor of Ethernet, to help build a 100-node PARC Ethernet. In their classic 1976 Communications of the ACM article, "Ethernet: Distributed Packet Switching for Local Computer Networks," Metcalfe and Boggs described the design of Ethernet. After leaving Xerox in 1979, Metcalfe remained the chief evangelist for Ethernet and continued to guide its development while working to ensure industry adoption of an open standard. As the founder of his own Silicon Valley Internet startup, 3Com Corporation, in 1979, Metcalfe bolstered the commercial appeal of Ethernet by selling network software, Ethernet transceivers, and Ethernet cards for minicomputers and workstations. "Metcalfe's original design ideas have enabled the bandwidth of Ethernet to grow geometrically. It is rare to see a technology scale from its origins to today's multigigabit-per-second capacity. Even with the advent of WiFi, Ethernet remains the staple mode of data communication, especially when security and reliability are prioritized. It is especially fitting to recognize such an impactful invention during its 50th anniversary year." "Ethernet is the foundational technology of the Internet, which supports more than 5 billion users and enables much of modern life," added Jeff Dean, Google Senior Fellow and SVP of Google Research and AI. "Today, with an estimated 7 billion ports around the globe, Ethernet is so ubiquitous that we take it for granted. It's easy to forget that our interconnected world would not be the same if not for Bob Metcalfe's invention and his enduring vision that every computer needed to be networked."