Sun Microsystems Taps Russians for Computing Talent : High tech: Some of the former Soviet Union’s best scientists are working with the U.S. firm to develop supercomputers.
Sun Microsystems has enlisted leading Russian scientists to help with supercomputer development, becoming one of the few American companies to find a way to use the wealth of talent that was used primarily by the former Soviet Union’s vast military complex.
Sun has been working for a year in cooperative research with a team led by Boris Babayan, a key figure in the Soviet space and defense computing program, said David R. Ditzel, director of advanced systems at Mountain View -based Sun.
The 59-year-old Babayan heads a 2,000-person division of the 60,000-employee Institute for Precision Mechanics and Computer Technology in Moscow.
Ditzel said Babayan and his 50-person team are not full-time employees of Sun, but are “spending much of their time” on a project to adapt Sun’s SPARC architecture to supercomputer applications.
The former Soviet Union is recognized to have produced perhaps the world’s largest group of technically skilled scientists, many of whom worked for the military and have since fled the republics in search of work elsewhere. Although the United States has expressed concern about former Soviets working for hostile nations, it has been slow to welcome them into U.S. scientific jobs because of security concerns.
But U.S. companies have been working on ways to bring work to scientists in the former Soviet Union.
For Sun, which makes computers and provides programming and software services, the relationship with Babayan’s Moscow group allows it to tap into unique skills developed in isolation from the rest of the world in a kind of technological Galapagos.
Russian scientists were forced to work with relatively primitive hardware because they could not get access to the latest western computers; therefore their software solutions were unusually creative--and different, Ditzel said.
“They have put a lot more brainpower into computing because their semiconductors were not so advanced,” he said.
As in the United States, supercomputer development was spurred in the former Soviet Union by the need to model nuclear explosions and by other defense applications. Now, supercomputers made by companies including Cray Research, Fujitsu and Thinking Machines are used for modeling everything from weather patterns to stock market fluctuations.
Sun’s Ditzel would not say how much the company is paying for access to Russia’s brainpower, but “it is a good deal for us . . . we couldn’t necessarily afford to hire this design team at Western salaries.” Russian scientists are generally paid a tiny fraction of what their American counterparts receive.
Ditzel said “we are compensating them well” in order to keep the team together, but “we don’t want to pay someone out of proportion” to local standards. “We feel we must be socially responsible.”
Ditzel said the institute is noteworthy for its flat management structure. “There are a lot of engineers and very few managers. In some ways I admire them. It’s run by scientists, not MBAs.”
But while both sides have much to learn from each other, it won’t always be easy, Ditzel said. “The question is, can Russian and American research teams work together?” he asked. “You can’t just pick up the phone and call” because of the lack of lines in Russia. On Tuesday, Ditzel tried about 50 times to get through to Babayan by phone with no luck.
Because of these difficulties, the 12-hour time difference, and the fact that the Russian scientists mostly read and write English better than they speak it, electronic mail is the primary form of communication, Ditzel said.
Ditzel said he couldn’t reveal who would own the ideas that come out of the cooperative research. He said Sun’s goal is “to establish a long-term relationship” with Babayan’s institute.
