Ivan E. Sutherland
ACM Turing Award Winner 1988
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Biographical Information
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General Background
Education
Early Work and Teaching
Sun Microsystems
Summary of Accomplishments
Summary of Publications
Summary of Patents
Ivan E. Sutherland
ACM Turing Award Winner 1988
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Turing Award Lecture: MICROPIPELINES
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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
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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
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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):
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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
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"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
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"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
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"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. 4453.
"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
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"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
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”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
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"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
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REGISTERS
[5]
Clocked-Logic Conceptual Framework
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Advantages [1]
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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
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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
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Events [1]
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Logic Modules for Events
Event-Controlled Storage Element
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Two-Phase Bundled
Data Interface
Transition-Signaling Conceptual Framework
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Two-Phase Bundled Data Interface
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Muller C-elements
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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
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[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