Sunnyvale ( or ) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is one of the major cities that make up the Silicon Valley. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 131,760.

The city is bordered by the San Francisco Bay and San Jose to the north, Moffett Federal Airfield to the northwest, Mountain View to the west, Los Altos to the southwest, Cupertino to the south, and Santa Clara to the east. It lies along the historic El Camino Real and Highway 101.

As part of the Silicon Valley, Sunnyvale is headquarters to several high-tech companies such as Maxim Integrated Products, Juniper Networks, Palm, Inc., AMD, NetApp, Spansion, Yahoo!, [http://www.mirapoint.com Mirapoint], and Ariba, Inc. Sunnyvale is also home to several aerospace/defense companies; Lockheed Martin has a major facility in Sunnyvale, and Honeywell, Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems - Marine Systems (location of the Hendy Iron Works Museum), and Spirent Communications also have offices in Sunnyvale. Sunnyvale is also the home to Onizuka Air Force Station (commonly called "the blue cube"). The base, named for the deceased Space Shuttle Challenger astronaut Ellison Onizuka, is the primary artificial satellite control facility of the United States armed forces.

Sunnyvale is one of the few U.S. cities to have a single unified Department of Public Safety, where all personnel are trained as firefighters and police officers, so they can respond to emergencies in either capacity.

Library services for the city are provided by the Sunnyvale Public Library, located at the Sunnyvale Civic Center.

Geography

Crime

The gang activity is considered far below that of street gangs located in Southern California and is addressed by the city through after-school programs and a "Zero Tolerance" policy for gang-related crimes.

Sunnyvale people

• Francie Larrieu Smith - Olympic winning runner, attended Fremont High School

• Teri Hatcher (actress on television's Desperate Housewives and Lois & Clark) was raised in Sunnyvale. She attended Mango Junior High School (now known as Sunnyvale Middle School) and Fremont High School.

• Brian Boitano (Olympic figure skater) is from Sunnyvale and attended Ponderosa Elementary School.

• Dr. Andrew Fire, 2006 Nobel Laureate in medicine who grew up in Sunnyvale, where he attended Fremont High School, Mango Junior High School (now Sunnyvale Middle School), and Hollenbeck Elementary School (now Challenger Private School).

• Landon Curt Noll, Astronomer, Cryptographer and Mathematician: youngest to world record for the largest known prime 3 times.

• Troy Tulowitzki (Major League Baseball player Colorado Rockies) grew up in Sunnyvale. He attended Columbia Middle School and Fremont High School.

• Tully Banta-Cain (Linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers. He attended Fremont High School. )

Sunnyvale in popular culture

• Sunnyvale is a subject of interest for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel fans, as "Sunnydale" is the name of the show's fictional town. One of the show's authors even created a faux website that gave Sunnydale the same ZIP Code as Sunnyvale.

• In the 1980s movie WarGames, the game company Protovision and NORAD's space division are located in Sunnyvale.

• Sunnyvale was the location of the GAP store in the famous Gap Girls Saturday Night Live skits starring Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, and David Spade.

• Sunnyvale's name was also used in the movie, "Life Size."

Sunnyvale trivia

• The first Pong machine was installed in Sunnyvale, in a bar named Andy Capps. The bar is now a comedy club called Rooster T. Feathers.

• A long standing legend of Sunnyvale is of a [http://www.snopes.com/horrors/ghosts/toysrus.htm ghost] that haunts the town's Toys 'R' Us store. Famed Psychic, Sylvia Browne, claims to have made contact with the ghost on the 1978 TV show "That's Incredible" and has named him Johny Johnson. She claims that he had been a farm hand who worked in the orchard where the toy store now stands. She says he bled to death from an accidental, self-inflicted axe injury to his leg.