Ivan E. SutherlandACM Turing Award Winner 1988

• Biographical Information¤ General Background¤ Education¤ Early Work and Teaching¤ Sun Microsystems¤ Summary of Accomplishments¤ Summary of Publications¤ Summary of Patents

Ivan E. SutherlandACM Turing Award Winner 1988

• Turing Award Lecture: MICROPIPELINES¤ Clocked-Logic Conceptual

Framework¤ Transition-Signaling

Conceptual Framework¤ Micropipelines without

Processing¤ Micropipelines with Processing

• Impact on Computer Science• Bibliography

General Information:

• Born: 1938, Hastings, Nebraska• Parents: Mom – Teacher, Dad – Ph.D. Civil

Engineering [2]• High School: In the 1950s, he was one of a very

few high school students who had written a computer program

• Hobbies: Motorcycles, Ballroom and Square dancing• Proudest Accomplishment: Four Grandchildren

Education:

• 1959 B.S. EE Carnegie Institute of Technology (Carnegie Mellon University)

• 1960 M.S. EE California Institute of Technology

• 1963 Ph.D. EE Massachusetts Institute of Technology» Studied under Minsky [6]» Ph.D. Thesis: “Sketchpad: A Man-

machine Graphical Communications System” [2]

Education:

• Sketchpad– First major Interactive Graphics System, first GUI– Used coding techniques similar to OOP– Memory structures to store objects– Zoom in and out [2] using clipping algorithms– Rubber-banding of lines– Perfect lines, corners, and joints[4]– Display file for screen refresh– Recursive methods for geometric transformations– Later additions included

• Polygon clipping• Hidden surface removal• Elegant algorithms for registering digitized views [9]

Education:

• Sketchpad– The concept of the constraint as a method of specifying

details of the geometry of the picture– The ability to display and manipulate iconic

representations of constraints– The ability to copy as well as instance both pictures and

constraints– Some elegant techniques for picture construction using a

light pen– The separation of the coordinate system in which a picture

is defined from that on which it is displayed– Implications of some of these innovations are still being

explored by Computer Science researchers today [4]

Early Work and Teaching

• 1963-64 Army and NSA• 1964–1966 D.O.D.

Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)– Director of Information

Processing Techniques

• 1966-1968 Harvard– Associate Professor [2]

Quint Foster wearing the Head-Mounted Display circa 1967

Early Work and Teaching

• 1968-1974 Utah– Co-founder Evans and

Sutherland Computer Corporation

– Part-time Computer Science Professor at University of Utah [2]

Early Work and Teaching

• 1974-1980 California¤ RAND Corporation¤ California Institute of

Technology» Chairman of Computer

Science [2]

Sun Microsystems

• 1980-1991 Sutherland, Sproull and Associates– Vice President and

Technical Director

• 1991-Present– Sun Microsystems

• Vice President [2]

Summary of Accomplishments

• Honors & Professional Societies (partial list):– IEEE John von Neumann Medal, 1998– Smithsonian Computer World Award, 1996– ACM Turing Award, Association for Computing Machinery,

1988– First Zworykin Award, National Academy of Engineering, 1972– Member, National Academy of Sciences (NAS), since 1978– Member, National Academy of Engineering (NAE), since 1973– Member, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE)– Fellow, Association for Computing Machinery

Summary of Publications

• "Sketchpad--A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System," Sutherland, I.E., Proceedings of the Spring Joint Computer Conference, Detroit, Michigan, May 1963, and MIT Lincoln Laboratory Technical Report #296, January 1963.

• "Ten Unsolved Problems in Computer Graphics," Sutherland, I.E., Datamation, May 1966, Vol. 12, No. 5, pp. 22-27.

• "On the Design of Display Processors," Myer, T.H., and Sutherland, I.E., Communications of the ACM, June 1968, Vol. 11, No. 6, pp. 410-414.

• "A Clipping Divider," Sproull, R.F., and Sutherland, I.E., AFIPS Conference Proceedings, Vol. 33, Part I, 1968, p. 765-776.

• "A Head-Mounted Three-Dimensional Display," Sutherland, I.E., AFIPS Conference Proceedings, Vol. 33, Part I, 1968, pp. 757-764.

• "Computer Displays," Sutherland, I.E., Scientific American, Vol. 222, No. 6, June 1970, pp. 56-81.

Summary of Publications

• "How Big Should a Printed Circuit Board Be?," Sutherland, I.E., and Oestreicher, D., IEEE Transactions of Computers, Vol. C-22, May 1973, pp. 537-542.

• "Reentrant Polygon Clipping," Sutherland, I.E., and Hodgman, G.W., Communications of the ACM, January 1974.

• "A Characterization of Ten Hidden-Surface Algorithms," Sutherland, I.E., Sproull, R.F., and Schumacker, R.A., Computing Surveys: Journal of the ACM, March 1974. Summarized in Naval Research Reviews, June 1975, pp. 21-23.

• "Computerized Commerce," Sutherland, I.E., The RAND Corporation, P5515, September 1975, acceptance address for the 1975 Award for Outstanding Accomplishment of the Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society, San Francisco, California, September 23, 1975.

Summary of Publications

• "Basic Limitations in Microcircuit Fabrication Technology," Sutherland, I.E., and Mead, C.A., and Everhart, T.E., RAND Report R-1956-ARPA, November 1976.

• "Microelectronics and Computer Science," Sutherland, I.E., and Mead, C.A., Scientific American, September 1977, pp. 210-228.

• "Machines That Walk," Raibert, M.H., and Sutherland, I.E., Scientific American, January 1983, pp. 44-53.

• "Micropipelines," Sutherland, I.E., Communications of the ACM, June 1989.

• "Logical Effort: Designing for Speed on the Back of an Envelope," Sproull, R.F., and Sutherland, I.E., IEEE Advanced Research in VLSI, C. Sequin, ed., MIT Press, 1991.

Summary of Publications

• "Technology and Courage," Sutherland, I.E., CMU Computer Science: A 25th Anniversary Commemorative, R.F. Rashid, ed., ACM Press, 1991. (also reprinted by Sun Laboratories)

• "The Counterflow Pipeline Architecture," Sproull, R.F., Sutherland, I.E., and Molnar, C.E., Technical Report Series TR-25, Sun Microsystems, Fall 1994, also in Design and Test of Computers, IEEE, Fall 1994.

• "Evolving the High Performance Computing and Communications Initiative to Support the Nation's Information Infrastructure," Brooks, F. and Sutherland, I.E., Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council, 1995.

Summary of Patents

• ”Optical Systems for Retrieving Stored Information," Sutherland, I.E., 3,103,305, April 21, 1964.

• "Display Windowing by Clipping," Sutherland, I.E., 3,639,736, February 1, 1972.

• "Vector Computing System as for Use in a Matrix Computer," Sutherland, I.E., 3,684,876, Aug 15, 1972.

• "Incremental Position-Indicating System," Sutherland, I.E. & Evans, D., 3,732,557, May 8, 1973.

• "A Computer Graphics Clipping System for Polygons," Sutherland, I.E. & Hodgman, G., 3,816,726, June 11, 1974.

• “System of Polygon Sorting by Dissection," Sutherland, I.E., 3,889,107, June 10, 1975.

Summary of Patents

• "Reticle Exposure Apparatus and Method," Sutherland, I.E. & Seitz, C.L., 4,209,240, June 24, 1980.

• "Reaction Control Valve," Sutherland, I.E., 4,622,992, November 18, 1986.

• "Asynchronous Queue System," Sutherland, I.E., 4,679,213, July 7, 1987.

• "Asynchronous First-In-First-Out Register Structure," Sutherland, I.E., 4,837,740, June 6, 1989.

• "Robot Arm Structure," Sutherland, I.E., 4,900,218, February 13, 1990.

• "Asynchronous Pipelined Data Processing System," Sutherland, I.E., 5,187,800, February 16, 1993.

ACM Turing Award 1988

• Citation– For his pioneering and visionary contributions to computer

graphics, starting with Sketchpad, and continuing after. Sketchpad, though written twenty-five years ago, introduced many techniques still important today. These include a display file for screen refresh, a recursively traversed hierarchical structure for modeling graphical objects, recursive methods for geometric transformations, and an object oriented programming style. Later innovations include a "Lorgnette" for viewing stereo or colored images, and elegant algorithms for registering digitized views, clipping polygons, and representing surfaces with hidden lines. [9]

Turing Award Lecture: Micropipelines

• Micropipelines – Event Driven Elastic Pipelines

• Clocked-Logic Conceptual Framework

• Transition-Signaling Conceptual Framework

Turing Award Lecture: Micropipelines

• Micropipelines without Processing

• Micropipelines with Processing

Clocked-Logic Conceptual Framework

• AND

• OR

• REGISTERS[5]

Clocked-Logic Conceptual Framework

• Advantages [1]– Simple way to design computing equipment– Widely taught and understood– Parts that operate with clocks are widely available– System noise dissipates by the time a clock event occurs

• Disadvantages– Complexity of Implementing Pipelines– Clock Speed Limited by Set-up time of Registers– Not flexible or easily updated– Not well suited for FIFOs (elastic pipelines)

• Synchronization must be handled in the design for FIFOs to connect senders and receivers with separate clocks (or to resolve the effects of clock skew [8])

Transition-Signaling Conceptual Framework

• Events [1]

• Logic Modules for Events• Event-Controlled Storage Element

• Two-Phase BundledData Interface

Transition-Signaling Conceptual Framework

• Two-Phase Bundled Data Interface

• Muller C-elements

• Event-Controlled Storage Element

Transition-Signaling Conceptual Framework

• Advantages [1]– Flexibility

• Design hardware with small parts previously designed and tested

• Handle vectors of variable length in software• Extend system life by replacing isolated parts with

components with improved speed or cost– Well suited for FIFOs (elastic pipelines)

• Synchronization handled by Two-Phase Bundled Data Interfaces

• Disadvantages– Not widely taught or understood

• Difficulty overcoming the Clocked-Logic Conceptual Framework

Micropiplelines without Processing

• FIFO - Flow through memory structure

Micropipelines with Processing

• Four Stage Event-based Pipeline

Impact on Computer Science

• Pioneered Interactive Computer Graphics– Sketchpad – Interactive Graphics Systems

• Benjamin Bederson, “Jazz: An Extensible Zoomable User Interface Graphics Toolkit in Java,” UIST, 2000.

– Hidden Surface Removal• T. Hudson, D. Manocha, J. Cohen, M. Lin, K. Hoff, H. Zhang,

“Accelerated Occlusion Culling using Shadow Frusta,” Symposium on Computational Geometry, 1997.

• Edward F. Grove, T.M. Murali, Jeffery Scott Vitter, “The Object Complexity Model for Hidden-Surface Removal,” International Journal of Computational Geometry & Applications, 1998.

• Mark de Berg, “Visualization of TINs,” Algorithmic Foundations of Geographic Information Systems, 1997.

• Jeff Erickson, “Finite-Resolution Hidden Surface Removal,” 11th Annual ACMSIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, 2000.

Impact on Computer Science

• High Performance Computing Machinery– Micropipelines

• Rhodri M. Davies and John V. Woods, “Timing Verification for Asynchronous Design,” European Design Automation Conference (EURO-DAC), 1996.

• L. Lloyd, K. Heron, A. M. Koelmans, A. V. Yakovlev, “Asynchronous Microprocessors: From High Level Model to FPGA Implementation,” 1997.

• C. Tofts, “Some Formal Musings on the Performance of Asynchronous Hardware,” University of Manchester Technical Report Series UMCS-96-2-2, 1996.

• O. A. Petlin and S. B. Furber, “Designing Asynchronous Sequential Circuits for Random Pattern Testability,” IEEE Proceedings, Computers and Digital Techniques, 1995

Bibliography• [1] "Micropipelines," Sutherland, I.E., Communications of the

ACM, June 1989.• [2] http://www.sun.com/960710/feature3/ivan.html• [3] http://www.es.com/about_eands/history/index.asp• [4] http://sln.fi.edu/tfi/exhibits/sutherland.html• [5]

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electronic/dflipflop.html• [6] http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/people.html• [7] "Technology and Courage," Sutherland, I.E., CMU Computer

Science: A 25th Anniversary Commemorative, R.F. Rashid, ed., ACM Press, 1991.

• [8] http://www.cs.umass.edu/~weems/CmpSci635/Lecture6/L6.I.html • [9] http://www.acm.org/awards/turing_citations/sutherland.html