I was contacted by CEO and VP Eng who knew me from Xylan days to come and help with their new 5G Time Sensitive Networking products where they were extending from NID to switch chassis products. Initially, I stepped in to help with their IEEE 1588 PTP/ITU standards implementation. This involved liason between IDT (Renesas) and Xilinix (AMD) on the 10G/25G/50G SyncE ethernet and ptp IP integration.
Designed and implemented TPM protection and implemented TSG Opal 2.0 encryption in the drive firmware. Implemented Google cloud based automated test and performance measurement suite and created manufacturing software for contract manufacturers.
Rockley Photonics was a specialist silicon photonics company. I was hired to implement the software for the networking demonstration chipset which was a network processor with integrated silicon photonics. After successful demonstration of this they refocused the company on interface cards.
Senior Software Architect in the Memory Division CTO Office. Working with DDR4 NVDIMM enabling chipsets and future memory technology projects.
Software Architect working on NVME based storage devices. I designed and implemented the flush to flash software which provides an NVMe non-volatile memory card. The main product is an SSD architecture which opens the NAND structure to the host. so called software defined storage.
System Architect Xirrus Working on the Cavium Network Processor based Wireless arrays. Catch up with the latest wireless standards, multi-user MIMO technology, etc.
MicroMemory was a highly specialized board solution and FPGA IP vendor in Chatsworth. It was a small, family firm of long standing and good reputation in its niche. I was hired as a system architect to design and implement software at the heart of an ambitious product line which would take the company from being a board supplier to other system integrator/solutions companies to being such a supplier itself. The "systems" are highly ruggedized chassis containing multiple processor and FPGA processing nodes for Radar Signal processing. In less ruggedized forms the same technology addresses health industry products such as 4-D Sonograms, MRI processing and Video and Image processing in general. While the central processing task, highly mathematical CPU intense transformations on high-volume sensor data sources was new to me, the system problems of handling high volume, low latency, data in a multi node chassis with fast switching backplanes was not.
MicroMemory was aquired by a Norwegian company, Vmetro, at the end of 2007 in a negotiated merger. Vmetro was the subject of a hostile takeover by Curtiss Wright at the end of 2008 when the finanical crisis made the company vulnerable on the European bourse.
Hired as a senior programmer I started by organizing the build system with a series of scripts. Also worked on their manufacturing automated test software for radio calibration, final system test, etc. All the while working on the main product line adding various features. Acted as an informal System Architect to orient the products towards a more enterprise level, multi-layer switch, network centric view.
This was very interesting as it was very educational on the wireless front.
So after the insanity of the bubble I took the opportunity to take stock. While giving the tech business time to settle down I looked around for ideas for a business venture of my own including ideas that were a complete break from everything before. But I was also on the lookout for stable business as usual.
Persuaded to join new startup to repeat the Xylan Experience! Oh well, best laid plans of mice and men and all that. Even the website is gone now! But some of us remember.
System architect on the chip-set and how it would be used in a real system. Designed the API software and the Hardware workbench evaluation software. Implemented the chip drivers. Heavily involved in the architecture of the network processor chip.
End result, a fully working three chip system - switch fabric, traffic manager, network processor - with software, $80M spent, no customers... Ah, the insanity of the bubble.
Xylan was bought by French multinational Alcatel to spearhead its Internetworking Group in North America. Integrated with Packet Engines and Internet Devices.
Hired to write Architecture Specification for what was to become the Omniswitch product. Persuaded to stay and implement it. Company went for IPO in '96. I ported the original architecture to succeeding generations of ASIC based hardware. Developed and hold patent on the any to any switching concepts of the product and wrote all high performance forwarding software.
After I finished my research contracts I applied to the US arm of my old employer in California. I obtained my Green Card while working on optimizing the performance of their RX7000 bridge/router product.
Formed my own consultancy company to carryon working on secure system research contracts when the US arm of Retix which had purchased TSL declined to continue working in this area. Produced a novel security policy model and developed formal machine proofs for a top-level design implementing this model. (SMITE). Presented papers at Oakland Security and Privacy Conferences.
TSL was purchased for its bridge products by a US portable software company to form a software/hardware bridge/router product. I continued to work on Secure System research contracts for the British Ministry of Defence. (SCP-3)
Small British startup developing bridge products. I worked on defence research contracts which one of the company founders specialised in. We worked together to design and implement the prototype of a secure communications processor (SCP-2)which was later productised by GEC under TSL supervision and certified to the B3 level of assurance by the UK Government.
Worked on communications subsystem of Terminal Systems products, mainly ATM's (cash machines not the protocol!). Initially these and other banking terminals were on Burroughs Poll/Select and IBM BiSynch but we modernised them to HDLC/SDLC, X.25 and SNA.