04 June 2003

Cambridge's computing money-spinner wins top award

Cambridge University Professor of Communication Engineering Andy Hopper FREng has won a prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal for his phenomenal record of developing and commercialising new computing technologies. He has founded or co-founded eleven start-up companies, including Acorn Computers Ltd, where he was Research Director. After the success of its BBC Microcomputer Acorn spawned the world-leading chip company ARM. Professor Hopper will receive his medal at the Academy Awards Dinner in London on Thursday 5 June.

Professor Hopper is currently excited about one of his newest spin-offs, RealVNC Ltd, formed last year to develop remote control software for desktop PCs. "This one is really going against the trend," he says, "we're going back to the old-fashioned idea of dumb terminals, which carry only graphics, linked to a central computer that does the hard work. It burns bandwidth passing all the instructions and graphics up and down the line but the trade-off is much simpler programming." Five million users have downloaded over 15 million licences for RealVNC from its open source on the web. "We're exporting British engineering to a huge number of people all over the world, "in its own field this is revolutionary technology but we run it with three lads in an office in Cambridge."

This kind of flexibility and vision has characterised Professor Hopper's career. He was one of the first academics to make a virtue of exploiting his research, creating partnerships with industry and venture capitalists. In 1986 he started an industrial research lab, funded first by Olivetti and later by Digital Equipment Corporation and Oracle. This was to become AT&T's first research venture outside the US when they bought the lab in 1999 - by 2002 it had a team of 80 in a perfect example of the academic-industrial collaboration to which Professor Hopper aspires. Unfortunately the crash in the telecoms market forced AT&T to close the lab last year but he remains typically optimistic and is continuing to develop some of the new ideas that emerged. These include his latest creation, a company called Ubiquitous Systems, which is developing applications for networked sensor chips - the backbone of concepts like the 'smart house'. Level5 Networks, with the world's fastest Gigabit Ethernet implementation, is also taking off. He also sees a silver lining to the cloud in that the lab has at least released its 'genes' - the talented engineers who made it work - into the market place.

"The communications industry must continue to grow," he says, "we're nowhere near to satisfying the huge demand for faster new technologies. But capital funding for new research projects is incredibly difficult right now - many venture capital companies are feeling very defensive and are imposing very severe demands and penalties. Fortunately a few are still taking a long-term view. It's a bit like the housing market - no one's buying at the top end so the whole system has slowed down." But there are still success stories: Cambridge Broadband Ltd, another of his babies, is he says "going like a rocket". Virata Corp, spun out of his lab ten years ago, now has a turnover of $250 million and half the world market for DSL semiconductor chips following a merger with Globespan Corp to form GlobspanVirata Corp.

ends

Notes for editors

1. The Academy's Silver Medals, instigated in 1995, are awarded annually to engineers aged 50 or under who have made outstanding contributions to British engineering. Only four awards may be made each year.
   
   
2. This year's other Silver Medals go to Stephen Furber FREng FRS, ICL Professor of Computer Engineering at the University of Manchester; Dr Ian Mays, Managing Director of Renewable Energy Systems in St Albans; and Richard Williams FREng, Anglo America plc Professor of Mineral and Process Engineering, University of Leeds.
   
   
3. The Royal Academy of Engineering brings together the UK's most eminent engineers from all disciplines. They use their unrivalled knowledge and experience for the public good, giving independent advice to Government, supporting engineering education and research and encouraging excellence and innovation.
   

For more information please contact:

Lize King at the Royal Academy of Engineering

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