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Dr. Robert Sullivan, or Dr. Bob, as he is commonly known within the uninterruptible uptime industry, joined ComputerSite Engineering and the Institute in 2000 after a 32-year career with IBM's Storage Systems Division in San Jose, CA. Prior to joining IBM, Dr. Bob received a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University and an MS and Ph.D. in Applied Mechanics from Stanford University. In 1992, Dr. Bob originated the concepts now known as hot and cold aisle cooling.
At the Institute, Dr. Bob developed and delivers the High Density Cooling seminar that is offered three times each year. This seminar reviews cooling basics and presents proven best practices for maximizing cooling and yield in computer room layouts. His expert problem-solving skills and extensive success in resolving customer hardware problems and in consulting with customers on computer room environmental issues have made him a highly demanded presenter at seminars and national technical meetings.
During his 32-year career at IBM, Dr. Bob did a wide variety of work including technology, component, and new product development; customer hardware problem resolution support; installation planning; and consulting on computer room environment and hardware installation issues. He contributed to the development of the Winchester Technology—small, lightly loaded heads, flying very close to the disk surface and starting and stopping on that surface—that became well known in the disk drive storage business. The Winchester Technology led to the development of the small hard drives that are used today throughout the industry in both PCs and file servers. He also contributed to the development of the original floppy disk product.
Dr. Bob is a recognized expert in the areas of computer room environments, hardware installation, computer room layout, power and power distribution, grounding, cooling, and airflow plus contamination identification and remediation. He has also done testing and consulting in the area of seismic bracing of equipment and facilities, including co-authoring a paper reviewing a wide variety of equipment tethering techniques.
Dr. Bob's pioneering work in computer room environments, and especially in the area of cooling and air flow, has had a major impact on the industry. He disproved the generally accepted idea that all the air under the raised floor mixed into a homogeneous mass, creating a uniform environment. Instead, he found that each air handling unit had its own plume which does not mix. He introduced the concept of hot and cold aisles as the proper way to arrange computer rooms containing higher thermal density computer equipment installed in drawers, or on shelves in racks. He has demystified the work of balancing airflow in a computer room, coming up with a few simple concepts that make the task simple and straight forward. This includes developing a simple air flow gauge (commonly referred to as "Dr Bob's Air Flow Gauge") from an 80-column punch card, which can be used to verify the correct flow from perforated tiles,
Dr. Bob has been intimately involved in the diagnosis and solution of conductive contamination problems in computer rooms and is recognized as the leading authority throughout the world on the subject. He was part of the team that identified the phenomenon of Zinc Whisker contamination—its source and the necessary steps to remediate such situations.
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