Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced Bryan Cantrill, senior staff engineer at Sun was selected to the Technology Review 35 (TR35), for his work on the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS). The selection by Technology Review, MIT’s magazine of innovation, honors Cantrill as one of thirty-five young innovators under 35 years old who exemplify the spirit of contemporary innovation in technology and have the potential to profoundly impact the world.
Cantrill was selected for his outstanding work designing the Solaris Dynamic Tracing (DTrace) technology, a function of the Solaris 10 OS. DTrace has the ability to non-invasively observe a running operating system, gain extraordinary insights into performance and availability, all with no measurable performance penalty or risk to the systems stability.
“The TR35 is among the most prestigious honors that can be bestowed on a young innovator,” says Technology Review Editor-in-Chief Jason Pontin. “We hail their accomplishments and look forward to even more from them in the future.”
“Bryan Cantrill has proved himself an extraordinary innovator,” said Greg Papadopoulos, executive vice president and chief technology officer, Sun Microsystems. “He simply refuses to believe hard problems can’t be solved simply because no one else has been able to solve them yet. DTrace is a perfect example. Bryan and his teammates came up with an elegant solution to a seemingly intractable problem. Not only that, they solved it within the constraints of a production environment.” Papadopoulos continued, “Bryan really exemplifies the creative discipline of engineering and his energy is contagious. It’s great to see him recognized.”
DTrace is a true example of a technology without borders, as it benefits all who use Solaris, spanning from financial services companies to logistics companies, from telecommunications companies to local utilities, from healthcare providers to educators. As a part of the OpenSolaris project, DTrace (and its source code) is available to everyone from the embedded appliance developer to the shoestring ISP and the student developer at http://www.opensolaris.org/ .
“Perhaps the full impact of the availability of DTrace will not be known for many years,” said Peter Baer Galvin, chief technologist, Corporate Technologies. “But any systems administrator who has sat at a keyboard and grappled with an unsolvable problem can attest to the power, utility and importance of DTrace.”
