Internet Pioneers Cerf and Kahn to Receive ACM Turing Award

NEW YORK, Feb. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, has named Vinton G. Cerf and Robert E. Kahn the winners of the 2004 A.M. Turing Award, considered the "Nobel Prize of Computing," for pioneering work on the design and implementation of the Internet's basic communications protocols. The Turing Award, first awarded in 1966, and named for British mathematician Alan M. Turing, carries a $100,000 prize, with financial support provided by Intel Corporation. Cerf and Kahn developed TCP/IP, a format and procedure for transmitting data that enables computers in diverse environments to communicate with each other. This computer networking protocol, widely used in information technology for a variety of applications, allows networks to be joined into a network of networks now known as the Internet.

ACM President David Patterson said the collaboration of Cerf and Kahn in defining the Internet architecture and its associated protocols represents a cornerstone of the information technology field. "Their work has enabled the many rapid and accessible applications on the Internet that we rely on today, including email, the World Wide Web, Instant Messaging, Peer-to-Peer transfers, and a wide range of collaboration and conferencing tools. These developments have helped make IT a critical component across the industrial world," he said.

"The Turing Award is widely acknowledged as our industry's highest recognition of the scientists and engineers whose innovations have fueled the digital revolution," said Intel's David Tennenhouse, Vice President in the Corporate Technology Group and Director of Research. "This award also serves to encourage the next generation of technology pioneers to deliver the ideas and inventions that will continue to drive our industry forward. As part of its long-standing support for innovation and incubation, Intel is proud to sponsor this year's Turing Award. As a fellow DARPA alumnus, I am especially pleased to congratulate this year's winners, who are outstanding role models, mentors and research collaborators to myself and many others within the network research community."

Making Networked Computers Communicate

In 1973, Cerf joined Kahn in a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, now called DARPA) project to link three independent networks into an integrated "network of networks." They sought to develop an open-architecture network model for heterogeneous networks to communicate with each other independent of individual hardware and software configuration, with sufficient flexibility and end-to-end reliability to overcome transmission failures and disparity among the participating networks. Their collaboration led to the realization that a "gateway" (now known as a router) was needed between each network to accommodate different interfaces and route packets of data. This meant designating host computers on a global Internet, for which they introduced the notion of an Internet Protocol (IP) address.

In May 1974, they published a paper describing a new method of communication called transmission-control protocol (TCP) to route messages or packets of data. Like an envelope containing a letter, TCP broke serial streams of information into pieces, enclosed these pieces in envelopes called "datagrams" marked with standardized "to and from" addresses, and passed them through the underlying network to deliver them to host computers. Only the host computers would "open" the envelope and read the contents.

This networking arrangement allowed for a three-way "handshake" that introduced distant and different computers to each other and confirmed their readiness to communicate in a virtual space. In 1978, Cerf and several colleagues split the original protocol into two parts, with TCP responsible for controlling and tracking the flow of data packets ("letters"), and the Internet Protocol (IP) responsible for addressing and forwarding individual packets ("envelopes"). The new protocol, TCP/IP, has since become the standard for all Internet communications.

Dr. Cerf, Senior Vice President for Technology Strategy at MCI, is responsible for identifying new technology needed for the development of new products and services. Dr. Kahn is Chairman, CEO and President of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), a not-for-profit organization for research in the public interest on strategic development of network-based information technologies, which he founded in 1986. Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn share a number of awards, including the 1997 National Medal of Technology from President Bill Clinton.

ACM will present the Turing Award at the annual ACM Awards Banquet on June 11, 2005, in San Francisco, CA. For more information, click on http://www.acm.org/.

About the A.M. Turing Award

The A.M. Turing Award was named for Alan M. Turing, the British mathematician who articulated the mathematical foundation and limits of computing, and who was a key contributor to the Allied cryptanalysis of the German Enigma cipher during World War II. Since its inception, the Turing Award has honored the computer scientists and engineers who created the systems and underlying theoretical foundations that have propelled the information technology industry. For additional information, click on http://www.acm.org/awards/taward.html .

About ACM

ACM (http://www.acm.org/) is widely recognized as the premier organization for computing professionals, delivering resources that advance the computing and IT disciplines, enable professional development, and promote policies and research that benefit society. ACM hosts the computing industry's leading Digital Library and Portal to Computing Literature, and serves its global membership with journals and magazines, special interest groups, conferences, workshops, electronic forums, Career Resource Centre and Professional Development Centre.