Urs Hoelzle
Encyclopedia
Urs Hölzle is senior vice president of operations and Google Fellow at Google
. As one of Google's first ten employees and its first VP of Engineering, he has shaped much of Google's development processes and infrastructure.
Before joining Google, he was an Associate Professor
of Computer Science
at UC Santa Barbara. He received a master's degree in computer science from ETH Zurich
in 1988 and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship that same year. In 1994, he earned a Ph.D. from Stanford University, where his research focused on programming languages and their efficient implementation. Via a startup founded by Urs, David Griswold, and Lars Bak (see Strongtalk
), that work then evolved into a high-performance Java VM named HotSpot, acquired by Sun' JavaSoft unit in 1997 and from there became Sun's premier JVM implementation.
He was also Brian Reid's manager at Google and mentioned in a lawsuit by Reid charging age-discrimination.
He is credited for creating Google Gulp for April Fool's Day in 2005.
He is also credited for having led the design of Google's very efficient data centers which are said to use less than half the power of a conventional data center. With Luiz Barroso he wrote a definitive book on "The Datacenter as a Computer", an introduction to the design of
Warehouse-Scale Machines, which is available online for free from Morgan Claypool. In June 2007, he introduced the Climate Savers Computing Initiative
together with Pat Gelsinger
which aims to halve the power consumption of desktop computers and servers.
He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery
(2009) and the Swiss Academy of Arts and Sciences . He is also a board member of the US World Wildlife Fund.
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
. As one of Google's first ten employees and its first VP of Engineering, he has shaped much of Google's development processes and infrastructure.
Before joining Google, he was an Associate Professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
of Computer Science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
at UC Santa Barbara. He received a master's degree in computer science from ETH Zurich
ETH Zurich
The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich or ETH Zürich is an engineering, science, technology, mathematics and management university in the City of Zurich, Switzerland....
in 1988 and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship that same year. In 1994, he earned a Ph.D. from Stanford University, where his research focused on programming languages and their efficient implementation. Via a startup founded by Urs, David Griswold, and Lars Bak (see Strongtalk
Strongtalk
Strongtalk is a Smalltalk environment with optional static typing support. Strongtalk can make some compile time checks, and offer "stronger" type-safety guarantees; this is the source of its name...
), that work then evolved into a high-performance Java VM named HotSpot, acquired by Sun' JavaSoft unit in 1997 and from there became Sun's premier JVM implementation.
He was also Brian Reid's manager at Google and mentioned in a lawsuit by Reid charging age-discrimination.
He is credited for creating Google Gulp for April Fool's Day in 2005.
He is also credited for having led the design of Google's very efficient data centers which are said to use less than half the power of a conventional data center. With Luiz Barroso he wrote a definitive book on "The Datacenter as a Computer", an introduction to the design of
Warehouse-Scale Machines, which is available online for free from Morgan Claypool. In June 2007, he introduced the Climate Savers Computing Initiative
Climate Savers Computing Initiative
The Climate Savers Computing Initiative is a nonprofit group of consumers, businesses and conservation organizations dedicated to promoting smart technologies that can improve the power efficiency and reduce the energy consumption of computers...
together with Pat Gelsinger
Pat Gelsinger
Patrick P. Gelsinger is the President and Chief Operating Officer, EMC Information Infrastructure Products at EMC Corporation. Before joining EMC, he was the first Chief Technology Officer of Intel Corporation and Senior Vice-president and General Manager of the Digital Enterprise Group at...
which aims to halve the power consumption of desktop computers and servers.
He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...
(2009) and the Swiss Academy of Arts and Sciences . He is also a board member of the US World Wildlife Fund.