Petri Kutvonen

Independent Information Technology Consultant, retired Information Technology Manager and Head of the Computing Facilities Group · Department of Computer Science* · Faculty of Science* and Process Manager of the IT for Science Group · University of Helsinki* · Helsinki · Finland

Short CV

My interest in IT began in the spring of 1971 when I took my first computer course at school and wrote my first computer program. During the course we used a General Electric GE-435 computer provided by Nokia Electronics. Next year I had a possibilty use a HP2114B minicomputer and learn programming, After graduating from high school, I started to major in Computer Science at the University of Helsinki.

I have been working for the University of Helsinki since 1975 until 2019 (43 years, 9 months). I have worked in various positions, but most of the time, I have been in charge of the computing facilities of the Department of Computer Science. I have also been involved in the administration of the University of Helsinki on various levels.

My goal has always been to provide computer science researchers, teachers, and students with the best possible tools — both software and hardware — to accomplish their tasks.

At the University of Helsinki* we used Burroughs Large System mainframe computers (B6500, B6700 and B7800) starting from the early 1970s. This video shows how time-sharing with CANDE was like in those days. Notice that this is not an authentic video from the 1970s but an emulation done over twenty years later. Sorry, no subtitles. The “teletype operators” are Teemu Kerola*, Timo Alanko*, and Arto Wikla*.

With my late friend Ilkka Hai­kala, we accomplished numerous interesting projects, including

• a graphical LISP-system (LISP-G) for the DEC PDP-15 written mainly in FORTRAN IV
• a text processing system called REPORT/EDIT which was used to produce many documents and theses at the department
• creation of the university's first online exercise and exam accounting system CI­SARS
• enhancement of a B6500/­B6700/­B7800 system simulator to enable it to run many major Burroughs large systems software and instrumented it to collect memory reference strings, which led to many studies of program behaviour in memory hierarchies 1978–1988
• the design and implementation of the operating system MOPO for the NOKIA MIKKO 3 minicomputers in 1980–1984, this was a major achievement completed with the help of numerous student projects.

Some other interesting events during my career include

• participation in the introduction of the Internet to Finland in 1987–1988
• operating one of the first DNS name servers in Finland which continued to function as a root server for the FI domain for over 20 years (and during the early years after the restoration of independence of Lithuania also as a root for the LT domain)
• acquisition of our first larger own  server  for the Department of Computer Science,  Ether­net, and an archipelago of SUN workstations in 1988
• witnessing the early years of Linux kernel development
• “supervision” and grading of Linus Torvalds's master's thesis Linux - a Portable Operating System (pdf) in 1996
• the transition from the SunOS UNIX environment to Linux and the introduction of three departmental Linux distributions (CSL1, CSL2, and CUBBLI) during the years 1995–2008
• the “Laptop for Every New Student” project, started 2008 with simple netbooks (running Linux), and for computer science students only but has since been expanded to gather the entire Faculty of Science offering high-quality business laptops
• the acquisition and deployment of the departmental super­computer clusters UKKO in 2009–2010 and UKKO 2.0 in 2016–2017.

One of the most memorable events in my career was the opportunity to attend a guest lecture by computer pioneer Konrad Zuse in Nuremberg around 1990 and realise how short the history of modern IT really is. In his presentation, Zuse talked mainly about Goethe's Faust — one can of course wonder about possible parallels.

I was awarded as Knight of the Order of the White Rose of Finland* by the Finnish president Sauli Nii­nistö on 6 December 2012.

I am married to Lea Kutvonen*, and we have one daughter. I am interested in genealogy and in this context I have written a little about the history of my family.