Experience – Pyramid

Pyramid Technology Corporation
San Jose, CA
Senior Software Engineer
July 1989 to July 1994

Senior kernel engineer in Current Product Development. Pyramid systems used up to 24 processors (SMP based) on three platforms: a dual port of BSD 4.2 and AT&T V.3 on RISC Chips (OSx), AT&T V.4 on the MIPS R3000 (CPL), and AT&T V.4 on the MIPS R4000 (NILE). My mentor was Richard Hammons.
Responsibilities included enhancements, performance improvements and bug fixing the kernel. Other responsibilities included training engineers.

  • Designed and implemented an expansion of the kernels virtual address space for OSx.
  •   Designed and implemented a kernel diagnostics harness for OSx, CPL, NILE.
  •   Increased the capabilities of the system boot strap for OSx.
  •   Project Lead for the dynamic run time I/O distribution interrupt mechanism for CPL, and NILE.
  •   Project Lead for CPL Large system bring up (13-24cpus).
  •   Project lead for a redesign of the kernel stack and user area for CPL – resulted in a major increase in system diagnosability and reliability.
  •   Project lead for a queued spinlock mechanism which replaced simple spinlocks during high contention – required for large CPL.
  •   Responsible for porting Computed Associates UnixCenter to CPL and NILE.
  •   Responsible for porting Software AG Adabas to CPL and NILE.
  •   Designed and implemented a diagnostics mechanism for kernel malloc space (CPL and NILE).
  •   Designed and implemented a kernel diagnostics harness for OSx, CPL and NILE.
  •   Project Lead for a user level spinlock mechanism which included cache alignment, lock testing queued locks, and statistics gathering.
  •   Project Lead for a redesign of the dispatch queues for large CPL and NILE.
  •   Fixed numerous bugs and added copious debugging capability to the following areas of the kernel; virtual memory, heap and map facilities, setjump, scheduler, debugger, and spinlocks.
  •   Successfully performed emergency on site surgery at the following mission critical sites: O’Conner and O’Conner in Chicago, US West in Seattle, and AT&T Bell Labs in Illinois.
  •   Received the following awards:
  •   Outstanding Software Engineer – 4th Quarter 1989.
  •   Pyramid Quality Award – 1st Quarter 1990.
  •   Current Product Achievement – February 1991.
  •   SMP Significant Contributor – April 1993.
  •   Pyramid Quality Award – July 1993.
  •   Pyramid Builder’s Club 1993 – included an all expense paid trip to Cancun.