Gordon Bell
Microsoft Research Silicon Valley
Email: GBell At Microsoft.com is the most reliable communication
link
AT&T Mobile phone
& answering machine:
(415) 640 8255 best voice link
Office Phone: (415) 972-6542
FAX only if you must: MS fax
gateway(425) 936-7329 address to
"gbell"
Microsoft Office: 835 Market Street, Suite 700, San
Francisco, CA, 94103
Gordon Bell is a principal researcher in
Microsoft Research Silicon Valley, working in the San Francisco Laboratory.
Gordon has long evangelized
scalable systems starting with his interest in multiprocessors (mP) beginning
in 1965 with the design of Digital's PDP-6, PDP-10's antecedent, one of the
first mPs and the first timesharing computer.
He continues this interest with various talks about trends in future
supercomputing (see Papers… presentations, etc.)
When joining Microsoft in
1995, Gordon had started focusing on the use of computers and the necessity of telepresence: being there without
really being there, then. "There" can be a different place, right
now, or a compressed and different time (a presentation or recording of an
earlier event). In 1999 this project was extended to include multimedia in the
home (visit Papers… presentations, etc.).
He is putting all of his
atom- and electron-based bits in his local Cyberspace. It is called by
MyLifeBits the successor to the Cyber All project. This includes everything he has accumulated,
written, photographed, presented, and owns (e.g. CDs).
The remainder of the site includes these pages:
- Extended
Bio--
education, work history, honors... Alaska fishing and France biking
- Papers, books, PowerPoint presentations, videos since
1995, when joining Microsoft
- Vitae: Listing of books, computers, interviews, papers,
patents, projects, and videos
4. Gordon's Cyber Museum that has Bell's books, the Hollerith Patent, the CDC 8600 Manual, a talk about Seymour Cray, an album of supercomputer photos, posters about the history of computing, etc.
5. Gordon's Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) Cyber Museum has artifacts, books, brochures, clippings, manuals, memos (e.g. The VAX Strategy), memorabilia, photos, posters, presentations, etc. relating to Digital Equipment Corporation a.k.a. DEC.
6. Supercomputing and the CyberInfrastructure lists articles, memos, talks, and testimony regarding the various aspects of high performance computing including funding, goals, and problems in reaching to the Teraflops in 1995 and Petaflops in 2010.
Bell's Law of Computer Classes and Class formation was first described in 1972 with the emergence of a new, lower priced microcomputer class based on the microprocessor. Established market class computers are introduced at a constant price with increasing functionality (or performance). Technology advances in semiconductors, storage, interfaces and networks enable a new computer class (platform) to form about every decade to serve a new need. Each new usually lower priced class is maintained as a quasi independent industry (market). Classes include: mainframes (60's), minicomputers (70's), networked workstations and personal computers (80's), browser-web-server structure (90's), web services (2000's), palm computing (1995), convergence of cell phones and computers (2003), and Wireless Sensor Networks aka motes (2004). Beginning in the 1990s, a single class of scalable computers called clusters built from a few to tens of thousands of commodity microcomputer-storage-networked bricks began to cover and replace mainframes, minis, and workstation. Bell predicts home and body area networks will form by 2010. See also the description of several laws (e.g. Moore's, Metcalfes's, Bill's, Nathan's, Bell's) that govern the computer industry is given in Laws, a talk by Jim Gray and Gordon Bell.
Gordon was with his Diamond Exchange colleagues at the
Boulders, Carefree, AZ where the group tested the Segway, a dual-processor, two
wheeled, computer and Human Transporter. Dan Bricklin's provides a detailed account,
but I want need one. Right is Ford's SUV version.