Biographical sketches of authors

Luiz C. Alves   IBM eServer Group, 2455 South Road, Poughkeepsie, New York 12601 (alves@us.ibm.com). Mr. Alves is a Senior Engineer working in the zSeries system design group. He graduated from New York University in 1975 with a B.S. degree in electrical engineering and received his M.S. degree in electrical engineering in 1977 from the Polytechnic Institute of New York. He joined IBM in 1977 working in the advanced system manufacturing engineering organization, where he held various technical and managerial positions. In 1985 he was named 3090 field quality assurance manager, and in 1987 he became the RAS manager for the 9021 processor families. He is currently responsible for defining the RAS requirements for future products.

Myron L. Fair   IBM eServer Group, 2455 South Road, Poughkeepsie, New York 12601 (mlfair@us.ibm.com). Mr. Fair is a Senior Engineer in the zSeries systems RAS group. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1967 with a B.S. degree in mathematics. He joined IBM that same year in the Systems Development Division, where he held various technical positions related to field and development RAS, and in special contracts technical assessment. In 1980, he transferred to the group staff headquarters and became manager of product RAS analysis in 1984. He is currently the team leader for RAS requirements and objectives for zSeries servers.

Patrick J. Meaney   IBM eServer Group, 2455 South Road, Poughkeepsie, New York 12601 (meaney@us.ibm.com). Mr. Meaney received a B.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Clarkson University in 1986 and an M.S. degree in computer engineering from Syracuse University in 1991. He is a Senior Engineer in eServer zSeries custom hardware design. He is the SCE RAS and recovery leader responsible for design for fault tolerance, error avoidance, error correction, recovery, and design for test and debug. He was also the SCE timing leader for the G4, G5, G6, and z900 servers. He is responsible for definition of SCE RAS and recovery features of future zSeries CMOS systems as well. Since joining IBM Poughkeepsie in 1986, he has held design and timing leadership positions on the ES/9021 bipolar-based servers as well as the S/390 G4, G5, G6, and z900 CMOS systems. Mr. Meaney holds fifteen U.S. patents and has nine patents pending. He has received several awards, including IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards for H5, G4, G6, and z900 and an IBM Outstanding Innovation Award for the G5 design.

C. L. (Jim) Chen   IBM eServer Group, 2455 South Road, Poughkeepsie, New York 12601 (clchen@us.ibm.com). Dr. Chen is a Distinguished Engineer in the zSeries systems development group. He received a B.S. degree from the National Taiwan University and a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Hawaii. Prior to joining IBM, he was a Research Assistant Professor of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Dr. Chen has worked in the areas of error-correcting codes, computer reliability, and digital data cryptography. He has received seventeen IBM Invention Achievement Awards, five IBM Outstanding Innovation Awards, and an IBM Corporate Award. Dr. Chen is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a member of the IBM Academy of Technology.

William J. Clarke   IBM eServer Group, 2455 South Road, Poughkeepsie, New York 12601 (wjclarke@us.ibm.com). Mr. Clarke is an Advisory Engineer in the zSeries product engineering group. He graduated from Rutgers University in 1982 and joined IBM in Poughkeepsie that same year. He worked on various chip designs for the system control element for the 3090 processor family. He also held development responsibility for the recovery design, error detection, fault isolation, and service interface. He worked in chip design on the 9021 family in the Level 2 cache. Mr. Clarke worked on server bringup for the 9021 and continued to hold RAS responsibility for the storage subsystem. He worked in engineering systems test in recovery and serviceability, joining product engineering in 1994 on the processors and storage team.

George C. Wellwood   IBM eServer Group, 2455 South Road, Poughkeepsie, New York 12601 (wellwd1@us.ibm.com). Mr. Wellwood joined IBM in 1963 in the thin-film memory development area. In 1969 he joined the S/360 Model 195 development team and has since remained in mainframe development. He was a designer on the S/370 Models 3032 and 3033. On the 9021 servers, he was a designer on the L3 memory controller. On the G4, G5, and G6 CMOS servers, he was a designer on the L2 cache and memory subsystem. For the z900, he was a designer on the L3 memory controller. Mr. Wellwood is an Advisory Engineer in zSeries custom SCE design. He received IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards for his work on S/390 G4 L2 cache development in 1997 and S/390 G5 cache and memory subsystem development in 1998. He holds two U.S. patents and has four publications.

Norman E. Weber   IBM eServer Group, 2455 South Road, Poughkeepsie, New York 12601 (nweber@us.ibm.com). Mr. Weber is an Advisory Engineer working in the zSeries RAS group. He joined IBM as a Customer Engineer in Chicago in 1967, working on mid-range 360 and 370 processors. In 1980 he moved to Endicott, New York, to work in service planning supporting 4300 processors and developing service strategies for 9370 systems. Mr. Weber was promoted to his current position as an Advisory RAS Engineer in 1990 and moved to Poughkeepsie in 1995.

Indravadan (Dan) N. Modi   IBM eServer Group, 2455 South Road, Poughkeepsie, New York 12601 (modidan@us.ibm.com). Mr. Modi is an Advisory Engineer in the zSeries systems RAS group. He graduated from Gujarat University, India, in 1966 with a B.S. degree in electrical engineering and received his M.S. degree in electrical engineering in 1968 from Utah State University. He joined IBM in Poughkeepsie, New York, that same year working in the power system design area, where he held various technical positions. He moved to IBM East Fishkill in 1982 as a manager of electrical analysis in the MLC area, responsible for substrate electrical characteristics along with delta I and coupled noise analysis. Mr. Modi returned to Poughkeepsie in 1986 to join the system assurance group, where he was responsible for system technology assurance. In 1990, he joined the RAS group, where he was responsible for technology reliability, SPQL, and development of system test and acceptance specifications. In 1998 he joined the custom microprocessor design group, where he was responsible for chip/MCM reliability, SPQL, and the system test and acceptance specifications for zSeries. In 1999, he returned to the systems RAS group, with his original responsibilities.

Brian K. Tolan   IBM eServer Group, Schoenaicherstrasse 220, 71032 Boeblingen, Germany (tolan@us.ibm.com). Mr. Tolan is an Advisory Engineer working in the zSeries Licensed Internal Code development group. He graduated from Columbia University with a B.S. degree in electrical engineering in 1981. He joined IBM at Endicott, New York, that same year, working in the first level packaging test development group. He has worked in system serviceability engineering development since 1988.

Fritz Freier   IBM eServer Group, Schoenaicherstrasse 220, 71032 Boeblingen, Germany (freier@de.ibm.com). Mr. Freier is an Advisory Engineer working in the support element application development group. He joined IBM in 1973, working as a Customer Engineer. He has held various positions in product assurance test and microcode development and is currently the team leader for system serviceability engineering in Boeblingen.