KUNLE OLUKOTUN: OGUN AT STANFORD,AFARA AT SILICON VALLEY

Kunle Olukotun,a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford and director of  the Stanford Pervasive Parallelism Lab, who also has a significant record in terms of innovation and the  development of his innovation in collaboration with industry.He  co-founded Afara Web Systems,  which was later acquired by Sun Microsystems  because Afara,Yoruba for "bridge",had problems gaining venture capital following negative financial sector developments in the US after 9/11.

Sun's acquisition of Afara is described as central to its efforts to reposition itself in its core market of microprocessor development.A core attraction for Sun was the Niagara microprocessor and system design,the history of which describes it as emerging from Olukotun's Hydra research project which later led him to seek venture capital funding to develop it.Olukotun's role in Niagara is also highlighted in this paper on innovation from Sun Microcystems.

Olukotun's academic papers  are evident on his university page and through his   100 papers  at the Scientific Commons. spanning 1993 to 2010.

You may read excerpts on Amazon from Olukotun's co-authored Multicore Processes and Systems. You can also read online Kunle Olukotun and Lance Hammond's paper "The Future of Microprocessors" .

The vision of the Stanford Pervasive Parallelism Lab is described at that link by Olukotun and his fellow researchers and by this information industry report which describes industry and scientists  collaborating  at the lab to create breakthroughs in the field   while Olukotun gives this  overview of pervasive parallelism at a computing conference.

On Mar 17, 2006, at 8:30 PM, toyin adepoju wrote:

Dear Prof.Olukotun,
Good morning.
I found your biographical profile which was in an email I got from  PARC announcing your forthcoming lecture most inspiring.  I am student of comparative literature who has an interest in the  sciences.

I am intrigued by the presence of the name ogun in your email [kunle@ogun.stanford.edu] and  your Stanford URL[http://ogun.stanford.edu/~kunle/] .May I ask if the use of that name in those  contexts  has any relationship to the Yoruba deity?Possibly a symbolic  relationship?

Thanks.
Toyin


"Kunle Olukotun" <kunle@cslmail.stanford.edu>      Re:
hello and enquiry
Date:    Mon, 20 Mar 2006 00:11:55 -0800
To:    "toyin adepoju" <tokem3000@yahoo.com>


As you know Ogun is the Yoruba god of iron and steel, invoked by all  whose occupations rely on iron.  Computer servers are
sometimes called  "big iron", so my server's name is "Ogun"

Kunle

For Professor Olokotun's Stanford page go to

http://ogun.stanford.edu/~kunle/