In the last eight weeks, more than 14 patents have been issued to Sun Laboratories researchers.  Some of these are first-time recepients of patents, others have several under their belts.  Here are some highlights:

• Method and apparatus  for using memory compression to enhance error correction, Gregory M. Wright; Mario I. Wolczko
  
• Selecting  basis functions to form a regression model for cache performance, Ilya Gluhovsky;  David Vengerov; John R. Busch    
• Transparent switch using optical and electrical  proximity communication, John E. Cunningham; Ashok V. Krishnamoorthy; Ronald Ho; Robert J. Drost
• Floating point divider with embedded  status information, Guy L. Steele, Jr.  
• Blinded encryption and decryption, Radia J. Perlman 

Sun's been named a great place to work in both the San Francisco Bay Area and in Greater Boston over the last week!

In the Bay Area, Sun is ranked #5 among large companies in the Bay Area Best Places to Work, which is issued by the Bay Area Business Journals.  In Boston, Sun was named one of the top 20 large companies to work for in the Greater Boston Best Places to Work, sponsored by the Boston Business Journal.

See Sun’s Center of Excellence (COE) program for the education community in action in this great video showing the construction of the COE at the Lurcerne University of Applied Sciences in Switzerland. To learn more, I contacted the student host, Michael Thalman, for an interview. Responsible for system, network and SAN administration, he keeps the Enterprise Lab running.  

Rebecca: “What’s so special about this lab?”

Michael: “Opened in December 2006, the lab is a really flexible environment that lets us be as open as possible, involving students in lab administration and supporting their ideas as much as we can. From a technical point of view, we are using an advanced framework developed with a great deal of help from Sun Switzerland. It allows us to switch systems instantly: it’s somewhat similar to replacing hard drives to boot other systems, but it uses SAN virtualization technologies to manage this virtually without physically going into the lab.”

[Bruno, the other person in the video, is the Head of the Enterprise Lab and Michael's boss.]

Rebecca: “Bruno, how did this lab get started?”

Bruno: “I met Scott McNealy when I worked at the Sun Dublin office. After I returned to Switzerland and started my job as an assistant professor at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences, I was asked to build a curriculum for distributed enterprise application. For the hands-on part of the course, I had two choices: .Net or Java. This put me in mind of Scott so I sent him an email to ask for help. He responded within six hours—I couldn’t believe it! From there, we got into a discussion about the University’s needs and then agreed to cooperate to build a lab for education and research purposes.”

Here is a press release issued at the opening of the lab. The lab was described fittingly as “a playground where they [students] can work creatively and without stress.”

Here is a link to the lab’s website. And information on joining the COE program.