The award's first recipient is Francisco Blanquicet of the University of South Florida at Tampa, who devised a method of using the Pause command in 802.3 standards to cut the power dissipation of Ethernet switches.

The Ethernet Alliance is a global, non-profit corporation committed to the continued success and expansion of Ethernet technology. Last fall, the alliance launched the White Paper Challenge as a part of a Universities Program. Alliance chairman Brad Booth says the program strives to rally more academic engineering and computer science programs in getting involved in brainstorming new Ethernet methods within the overall structure of IEEE 802.3 standards.

Blanquicet's paper was selected for its "green" potential for reducing power in data centers and enterprise Ethernet networks, as well as the fact that the process did not require updates to deployed Ethernet switches.

He decided to research the topic when he first realized that there are many aspects of overall software standards in Ethernet that have not taken advantage of their full capabilities. His advisor, Ken Christensen at USF, helped narrow Blanquicet's focus on how a Pause command could better facilitate the controlling of power in Ethernet switching, a method he refers to as "Pause Power Cycle."

Inspired partly by the work of the 802.3az task force on "Energy Efficient Ethernet," Blanquicet says that he realized that Pause flow-control could be used in cycling between on and off states. The paper discusses how using a cycle time of under 50 ms to prevent it from affecting time-sensitive traffic such as voice and video.

Citing figures from 2,000 of 95,000 Ethernet switches in the US consuming 3.2 terawatts/hours of electricity, Blanquicet estimated that the US alone can stand to save $132 million per year in energy costs, with annual energy consumption seeing a reduction of 1.65 terawatts per hours.

Blanquicet also added that he is extending his Ethernet research to include ways for adaptive PPCs to be adjusted for duty cycles.