Oracle Labs (formerly Sun Microsystems Laboratories, or Sun Labs) is a

research and development Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in Europe as research and technological development (RTD), is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products, and improving existi ...

branch of

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...

. The labs were created when Oracle acquired

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, ...

. Sun Labs was established in 1990 by

Ivan Sutherland Ivan Edward Sutherland (born May 16, 1938) is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer, widely regarded as a pioneer of computer graphics. His early work in computer graphics as well as his teaching with David C. Evans in that subj ...

and

Robert Sproull Robert Lamb Sproull (August 16, 1918 – October 9, 2014) was an American educator, physicist and US Department of Defense official. Sproull was born in Lacon, Illinois. A graduate of Deep Springs College, Sproull studied English literature at Co ...

. The initial locations were in

Menlo Park, California Menlo Park is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County within the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the so ...

and

Burlington, Massachusetts Burlington is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 26,377 at the 2020 census. History It is believed that Burlington takes its name from the English town of Bridlington, Yorkshire, but this has never b ...

, United States. Oracle Labs has locations in Redwood Shores, California;

;

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge beca ...

, UK;

Brisbane Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the states and territories of Australia, Australian state of Queensland, and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a populati ...

, Australia;

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, Austria;

Zürich , neighboring_municipalities = Adliswil, Dübendorf, Fällanden, Kilchberg, Maur, Oberengstringen, Opfikon, Regensdorf, Rümlang, Schlieren, Stallikon, Uitikon, Urdorf, Wallisellen, Zollikon , twintowns = Kunming, San Francisco Zürich () i ...

, Switzerland; and Casablanca, Morocco.

Sun

Sun Labs worked in areas such as

asynchronous circuit Asynchronous circuit (clockless or self-timed circuit) is a sequential digital logic circuit that does not use a global clock circuit or signal generator to synchronize its components. Instead, the components are driven by a handshaking circui ...

optical communications Optical communication, also known as optical telecommunication, is communication at a distance using light to carry information. It can be performed visually or by using electronic devices. The earliest basic forms of optical communication date b ...

, new

web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created b ...

technologies,

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

technologies, and

computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections ar ...

James G. Mitchell James George "Jim" Mitchell is a Canadian computer scientist. He has worked on programming language design and implementation ( FORTRAN WATFOR, Mesa, Euclid, C++, Java), interactive programming systems, dynamic interpreting and compiling, docume ...

directed the labs starting in 2000. When asked in 2007 why Sun continued to put resources into research as the market turned to commodity pricing, chief executive Jonathan I. Schwartz said, "You need to spend enormous amounts of money to differentiate."

Oracle

In 2010 after Sun was purchased by

, it became Oracle Labs. Sproull was director. He was appointed in June 2006.

References

External links

* {{Coord missing, San Mateo County, California Organizations established in 1990 Sun Microsystems Research organizations in the United States Information technology organizations Information technology places Buildings and structures in San Mateo County, California Burlington, Massachusetts Menlo Park, California