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, the ...

. 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 subje ...

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 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 Redwood Shores is a waterfront community in Redwood City, California, along the western shore of San Francisco Bay on the San Francisco Peninsula in San Mateo County. Redwood Shores is the home of several major technology companies, including Ora ...

;

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 bec ...

, 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 Zürich () is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zürich. It is located in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zürich. As of January 2020, the municipality has 43 ...

, Switzerland; and

Casablanca Casablanca, also known in Arabic as Dar al-Bayda ( ar, الدَّار الْبَيْضَاء, al-Dār al-Bayḍāʾ, ; ber, ⴹⴹⴰⵕⵍⴱⵉⴹⴰ, ḍḍaṛlbiḍa, : "White House") is the largest city in Morocco and the country's econom ...

, 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 circuit ...

s, optical communications, 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 by ...

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 List ...

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 are ...

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 Jonathan Ian Schwartz (born October 20, 1965) is an American businessman. He is currently president and CEO of CareZone, a firm devoted to lowering the price of prescription drugs for those facing chronic illness. Before founding CareZone, Sch ...

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