Thomas J. Merritt

Areas of Expertise

• CodeGen's SmartFirmware, an implementation of IEEE Std. 1275, 7 years.
• FreeBSD system administration, kernel development, device drivers, and applications development, 10 years.
• X Windows server device drivers, 5 years.
• Kernel device drivers for Solaris, HP-UX, Digital Unix (Tru 64), FreeBSD, Linux, LynxOS, and VxWorks, 8 years.
• TCP/IP client/server network programming, 13 years.
• Embedded software development, including custom operating systems and device drivers, with MIPS, PowerPC, Alpha, and 68000, 20 years.
• X Windows/Motif graphical user interface development, 7 years.
• Unix applications programming and systems administration, 20 years.
• Assembly language programming on wide variety of processors, 16 years.
• C++ programming and class library development, 9 years.
• C programming language compilers, 5 years.
• Microprocessor emulation and logic analysis, 3 years.
• High performance storage allocators, 8 years
• Application level performance tuning, 9 years.

Work Experience

• 1/92 - Present     CodeGen, Inc., President
  I am responsible for day to day operation of the Company. I have been responsible for hiring outside professionals for various services that the business has required, such as legal and accounting services.
  
  I have also developed a number of software packages and technologies that CodeGen licensees to its clients. These include a compiler back end that supports the Am29050, i960, MIPS R4000, DEC Alpha, PowerPC, Motorola 680x0, and IA-32 processors, as well as the 68HC11 and 68HC16 microcontrollers. This compiler technology is currently available as part of our CC-Fcode compiler.
  
  My focus for the last six years has been developing our SmartFirmware, implementation of the IEEE-1275 OpenFirmware standard. I have been involved in the design of nearly every aspect of the product, and have been primarily responsible for the memory management, PCI bus and Flash memory support. I am currently working on system support for the AMD Athlon64 and Opteron processors
  
  I am the author of SmartAlloc, CodeGen's high performance memory allocator.
  
  I created several web sites using the PHP4 scripting language and the PostgreSQL database.
  
  I have worked on a number of projects that were developed under contract or licensee to specific clients.
  
  
  • FCode device driver for Intel 8254x Network Controllers.
  • SmartFirmware system support for Cirrus Logic ARM EP7312 development system.
  • Device driver for AMD 79C97x Network controllers.
  • Device driver for 3Dfx Voodoo 3 graphics controller
  • Device driver for #9 Imagine 128 graphics controller
  • Device driver for Cirrus Logic 7555 Matterhorn graphics controller
  
  I have done consulting for a number of companies, the most noteworthy are as follows:
  
  
  • ATC-NY
    CodeGen and ATC-NY are currently working together on a DARPA SBIR contract to develop security modules for OpenFirmware that can detect and prevent execution of malicious code on plugin modules. I have meet with ATC-NY on serveral occasions as well as many teleconferences to make available to ATC-NY my knowledge of OpenFirmware and device driver techniques.
    
    
  • Themis Computer
    Customized Sun OpenBoot firmware for ruggedized E4500 enterprise server. This included writing a FCode device driver for the Tundra Universe II PCI-VME bridge chip, and adding commands for thermal monitoring and control as well as adapting the firmware update utility.
    
    
  • L-3 Communications
    Provided on site consulting to assist L-3 in optimizing the graphics rendering of an F-16 simulator. The simulator used a number of Number Nine I128 based graphics modules and depended upon making full use of a number graphics rendering accelerations on the chip.
    
    
  • Connex, Inc.
    Developed an I2C device driver for VxWorks for the Intel 810E chipset. The device driver was used to control an LCD front panel display, receive user input, and monitor drive bay status in a RAID Network Storage device.
    
    
  
  
• 5/94 - 3/95    Contract to Informix Software, Inc.
  Ported Informix's NewEra object-oriented 4GL compiler and run-time system from Microsoft Windows to Solaris 2.3. Converted run-time from archive libraries to shared libraries to reduce memory requirements.
  
  
• 5/94 - 10/94    Contract to Peritek Corporation
  Ported device driver for high-performance graphics card to Solaris 2.3, System V release 4 for Motorola 88110 processors, VMEexec 3.0, and Psos+ 2.0 operating systems.
  
  
• 1/94 - 4/94    Contract to Sun Microsystems, Inc.
  Developed a command interpreter to aid in testing of Project DOE Messaging Object Service. Created test scripts to exercise all aspects of the product. Identified memory leaks and verified test coverage. Command interpreter also formed the basis of end user documentation aimed at instructing developers on the capabilities of the Object Service. Setup build environment and product installation scripts used to create master media. Assisted in writing and editing the Messaging Object Service Programmer's Guide.
  
  
• 3/93 - 1/94    Contract to Taligent, Inc.
  Designed and implemented a suite of tests to verify the correct operation of the micro kernel core of Taligents Pink Operating System. These tests verified the task and thread services, messaging services, and virtual memory management services of the operating system. The testing was completed on schedule.
  
  
• 9/83 - 12/91      Hewlett-Packard Co.
  
  • Scientific Instruments Division
    Developed performance enhancements for lastest revision of GC/MS instrument control software. Made major improvements to usability of X Windows based user interface. Integrated Client/Server and command language modules provided by an independent group. Eliminated backlog of defects in instrument control software at all levels of system from user interface to embedded code. Setup site wide software configuration management systems. Managed product builds and internal releases. Contributed to the development of HP's Codelib C++ Class library. Developed C++ Class library for manipulating GC/MS data.
    
    
  • Electronic Design Division
    Lead team developing design automation link between HP's schematic capture systems and HP's 16500 logic analyzer. Product allowed gate array designers to verify actual parts behavior with simulation results and was written in C++.
    
    
  • Logic Systems Division
    Developed C subset cross compiler, embedded operating system, and Unix host communication software for 6809 based instrument controller. Developed software architecture for Unix version of HP64000 family of microprocessor emulators. Developed 8086 family of Unix based emulators. This included user interface design and development of 8086 emulator specific device drivers for the instrument controller.
    
    
• 6/80 - 9/82    Systems Control, Inc.
  Developed control software for 6809 based embedded controllers used in electric power control systems. Embedded controllers acquired analog and digital data from transducers at remote locations in the power grid and transmitted data to a central power management computer system. Controllers also executed commands from the central computer to control power switching system.

Education

• 9/81 - 6/83
  University of California, Santa Barbara
  BS Electrical and Computer Engineering, with honors

Organizations

• Tau Beta Pi
• Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers
• Association of Computer Machinery
• Usenix

Operating Systems

• VxWorks
• LynxOS
• HP-UX
• OSF/1, Digital Unix, Tru 64
• SunOS 4.1.4
• Solaris 2.3 thru Solaris 9
• FreeBSD 1.0 thru FreeBSD 4.8
• OpenBSD 2.4 thru OpenBSD 3.3
• NetBSD 1.1 thru NetBSD 1.6
• Linux 2.4.13
• System V Unix
• VMEexec
• pSOS+
• Windows 95
• Windows 2000 Professional
• Windows XP

Programming Languages

• C++
• C
• Java
• PHP
• FORTRAN
• Pascal
• Awk
• Korn Shell
• TCL (Tool Command Language)
• Perl 5
• SQL
• Various Assembly Languages
  • Micro controllers: Z80, 6809, 68HC11, 68HC16
  • CISC: IA-32, 68020, VAX, PDP-11, AMD64
  • RISC: MIPS, ARM, Alpha, PowerPC, Sparc, PA-RISC, 88110, 80960, 29050