Plenary Session

Milo Medin, Google | Greg Papadopoulos, New Enterprise Associates | Isao Sugino, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan

Milo Medin

Vice President, Access Services, Google

Presentation: Bandwidth, Optics and the age of Abundance

Abstract: Over the last decade, Internet traffic has grown at a dramatic rate, yet prices for Internet transit have dropped significantly and worldwide Internet access prices have declined or stayed stable, despite increases in speeds and usage. This has empowered the growth of bandwidth-heavy video streaming services and new applications that are challenging traditional services on both quality and available content.

The primary reason that the Internet has been able to scale in capacity and yet have a dramatic reduction in the price/bit of transport is due to the innovation of the optical engineering community in building technologies that allow for much higher data rates to be transmitted across existing fiber optic infrastructure, and be able to add that capacity at lower and lower cost.

While some quarters are now calling for more aggressive usage-based pricing that is based on a paradigm of scarcity, it's important to realize that we have actually been living in an era of abundance, delivered courtesy of the optics community. With new optical and switching technologies coming that continue this trend, it's now possible to see a path forward to gigabit speed access networks like what we in Google are deploying in Kansas City.

Biography: Milo Medin has been part of the Internet development community for more than 25 years. He is currently the vice president of access services at Google, where he oversees the company's Gigabit Fiber to the Home project and other efforts to improve access to the Internet.

Prior to joining Google in 2010, he was founder and CTO of M2Z Networks, a company that sought to deploy a national broadband wireless network system that will expand consumer network access by providing nationwide portable broadband service that was also to help bridge the digital divide.

He was co-founder and the chief technology officer of Excite@Home, where he led the development of the company's national infrastructure, and helped deliver the first large-scale residential broadband access service in partnership with major cable operators.

Earlier, Medin worked at NASA's Ames Research Center, where he managed the primary west coast interconnect for the Internet, and architected and managed the global NASA Science Internet. Before NASA, while enrolled at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, he worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, programming high-performance computers in support of various defense programs.

Medin holds a bachelor's in computer science from UC Berkeley. He has participated in a number of public policy forums, including two National Academy of Sciences panels and a variety of TechNet initiatives, and given testimony in Congress and before the Federal Communications Commission on broadband technology policy. He has received two patents in the field of network access technology.

Greg Papadopoulos, Ph.D.

Venture Partner, New Enterprise Associates

Presentation: How to Design and Build Your Very Own Exascale Computer

Abstract: A computer of any real size today is built around from thousands of individual servers, storage arrays and network switches. Mostly, the construction of these systems are left as an Exercise for the User, but that's changing rapidly. Patterns around compute-storage-network virtualization are emerging, and are apt to coalesce, finally, into some coherent view of a interconnect-centered system. Optics will play both a defining and enabling role in this "re-integration," and by 2020 it's likely that any competitive large-scale system will crucially depend upon optical interconnects all the way to the processing chips themselves. In this talk, Papadopoulos will look at the forces that have shaped the way we build very large systems today, and speculate about the future history exascale computers and the industry that creates them.

Biography: Greg Papadopoulos, a 20-year veteran of the computer industry, is a venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, a venture capital and growth equity firm. Before that he served as chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems, where he directed the company's $2 billion R&D portfolio. He was associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, where he conducted research into scalable systems and was on the founding team of three technology companies: PictureTel (videoconferencing), Ergo Computing (PCs) and Exa Corporation (fluid dynamics). He was also Senior Architect at Thinking Machines Corporation, where he led the design of the successor of the CM-5 MPP supercomputer. Earlier in his career, he was a development engineer at Hewlett Packard and Honeywell. Papadopoulos serves on the University of California's President's Board on Science and Innovation, and is a trustee for the SETI Institute and the Computer History Museum, both in Mountain View, Calif. He holds a B.A. in systems science from the University of California at San Diego, as well as an M.S. and a Ph.D. in engineering from MIT.

Isao Sugino

Director of the Research and Development Office, Technology Policy Division, Global ICT Strategy Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan

Presentation: Disaster Recovery and the R&D Policy in Japan's Telecommunication Networks

Abstract: Communication network infrastructure is an indispensable base for people's lives and social/economic activities. The Great East Japan Earthquake and following tsunami on March 11, 2011 struck people's lives and caused serious communication disruptions in a wide area of Japan's network. While intense efforts have been paid to recovery, this unprecedented disaster has led to serious discussions on exploring ways to make the communication network more resilient to future disasters. This talk will discuss the impacts of the earthquake and the tsunami on Japan's telecommunication networks, its recovery efforts, as well as the action plans and the R&D policy toward building a dependable network infrastructure in the future.

Biography: Isao Sugino has been involved for 20 years in Japan's government administration related to ICT/telecommunications, including radio frequency management, radio licensing, business/technical regulations, and numbering plans. From 2001 to 2004, he performed diplomatic services as the first secretary of the Embassy of Japan in London, and engaged in various negotiations on ICT issues between Japan and the UK. He was also the deputy head of the Japanese delegation for both the Radiocommunication Assembly in 2007 (RA-07) and the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly in 2008 (WTSA-08) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

In 2009, he joined the Kyushu Institute of Technology (Kyutech), Japan, as professor at the Network Design Research Center. At Kyutech, he conducted research on policy analyses and technology management in the areas of ICT/telecommunications and new generation network architecture.

In August 2011, Sugino was appointed to his current position in Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), where he is responsible for the planning and management of various national R&D projects in ICT fields.

Sugino holds a B. Eng. and M. Eng. respectively from Waseda University, Japan, as well as an M.S. in technology and policy from MIT.