Sun labs is one of this institutions where scientists run around trying to solve unsolvable problems. The server vendor allocates about two percent of its research and development budget to Sun Labs, yet it is responsible for roughly 50 percent of all the patents filed within the company.

Once a year Sun Labs opens its doors to show off some of the projects they are working on. This isn't just a PR stunt – research arms inside tech companies often have to fight for their survival. They don't work on revenue generating products, and often create technology that makes existing product lines obsolete. Opening their doors to internal and external visitors allows Sun Labs to justify its existence.

Glen Edens Glen Edens, director of Sun Labs, describes his task as: finding what replaces Solaris, Sparc and Java. If you were the Java product manager, wouldn’t you too rather kill this Edens figure? Opening Sun Lab's doors is merely a preemptive strike against all the threatened Sun employees.

In the following post you'll see some projects that I found noteworthy at this year's Sun Labs Day that took place yesterday (Thursday) at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.

Sun's Glen Edens.

29 Apr 2005