I am a computer scientist/computer engineer specializing in parallel and distributed computer systems. I have been a Systems Engineer at Northrop Grumman, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at UC Irvine, and am now chief scientist at Hiperwall Inc., a company I co-founded. My involvement with discovering and using computers to the limits of their abilities started in 1979 when I got my TRS-80 Model I. Since then, I have built and/or programmed computer systems from 8-bit microcontrollers to supercomputers with more than a thousand processors. I am particularly interested in unusual forms of parallelism that involve more that just conventional CPUs. Examples include GPU computing and the Cell processor. I call this asymmetric parallelism and started the Asymmetric Computing blog to explore it and teach about it.
At Northrop Grumman, I was the system engineer responsible for the avionics core processor for the F-23 Advanced Tactical Fighter proposal. I also developed advanced hardware and software architectures for new and upgraded avionics systems, including prototype systems for flight testing on the B-2 bomber. I played a significant role in designing and developing the software suite for the Life Support for Trauma and Transport portable emergency room-on-a-sled and am co-inventor on several of the key patents. That project was spun off to form a startup company, Integrated Medical Systems, to build and continue development of the units.
I joined UC Irvine as an assistant professor shortly after I earned my Ph.D. so I could continue my research into parallel and distributed computer systems. I founded and led the Scalable Parallel and Distributed Systems research group and graduated 5 Ph.D. students and many more M.S. students. Among other things, I developed software mechanisms to allow multi-core processors to better utilize their caches for communication between threads rather than using much more expensive main memory operations. I also helped develop the HIPerWall, the world’s highest resolution tiled display (at the time), and used that technology as a basis to form Hiperwall Inc.
At Hiperwall Inc. (motto: See the big picture), I am Chief Scientist. I developed the advanced network infrastructure for Hiperwall systems as well as several key software components. I continue to develop and deploy new technology to make Hiperwall systems even more powerful, productive, and user friendly.
Education:
Carnegie Mellon University – B.S. Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering
University of Southern California – M.S. Computer Engineering
University of Southern California – Ph.D. Computer Engineering