The
Ethernet is the standard connection for everything from servers
inside data centers to telecommunications networks.
The Association for Computing Machinery credited Metcalfe, 76,
with the Ethernet's "invention, standardization, and
commercialization" in conferring its 2022 Turing Award, known as
the Nobel prize of computing. It comes with a $1 million prize
thanks to backing from Alphabet Inc's Google.
The Ethernet got its start when Metcalfe, who later went on to
co-found computing network equipment maker 3Com, was asked to
hook up the office printer.
In the early 1970s, he worked at Xerox's Palo Alto Research
Center, which had invented the personal computer and also a
laser printer. Metcalfe sketched out a networking approach that
would excel at connecting them together in way that could expand
smoothly as the number of computers in the network rose - which
helped pave the way for the internet.
Metcalfe, who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in 1969 and earned a doctorate in computer science
from Harvard in 1973, told Reuters in an interview that there is
still much research to be done in connecting computers,
especially in artificial intelligence.
Metcalfe said previous generations of AI "died on the vine
because of a lack of data." That is no longer a problem thanks
to the billion-plus people generating data by using the
internet, but the challenge now is to better connect the
computers that process that data through artificial neural
networks.
Those networks loosely approximate the human brain, except that
in a human brain, neurons have more than 10,000 connections
each, while their artificial counterparts have far fewer.
"You can either increase the compute power of the neurons, or
you can connect them better. And the brain teaches us that
connecting them is where it's at," Metcalfe said.
The vast room for improvement in connecting neural networks "is
cause for optimism on the future of AI, which I think will
continue scaling," he added.
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Edwina
Gibbs)
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