The essential value and meaning of things is in their intrinsic ability to provide a context for new discoveries.
LANGUAGES: Scala, C, C++, Java, Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, SQL, CQL
OPERATING SYSTEMS: Apple, Linux, Windows, Embedded Systems.
TOOLS: Akka, Kafka, IntelliJ IDEA, ScalaIDE, WebStorm, Angular, sbt, ScalaTest, AkkaTestKit, Maven, Ant, JUnit, Security Toolkits (BSAFE, Entegrity, OpenSSL), Hadoop, Oracle, Application Servers (Play, JBoss, Weblogic), Segue, Mercury Interactive, Rational, Eclipse, Grinder, Atlassian (Clover), CVS, Subversion, custom test frameworks, Final Cut Pro,
RISC PROCESSORS & Möbius: I was one of the early people in Apple to grok the potential of Reduced Instruction Set Computers (RISC). In the early 1980s, years before the Macintosh, I was on the Apple ][ team ( Apple //e, Apple //GS, Apple //c). After the //c was completed we began looking around for a microprocessor update for the 6502 based product line. I had read David Patterson's white paper The Case for the Reduced Instruction Set Computer [Berkeley RISC Project], and in 1985 I brought John Hennessy's MIPS team into Apple for a presentation. [BTW, both Berkeley RISC, and MIPS at Stanford were funded by (D)ARPA's VLSI Project.] I liked the MIPS RISC design okay but it seemed a bit too complex for the Apple ][ culture. When Paul Gavarini joined Apple around that same time, he introduced me to a then obscure microprocessor that was designed for Acorn Computers in England by Steve Furber and Sophie Wilson. It was called the Acorn RISC Machine, later to be named the Advanced RISC Machine (ARM). I was impressed with the ARM's simple, elegant design and relatively low power requirements and thought it looked like a near perfect processor for continuation of the Apple ][ line.
I became more familiar with the ARM by writing a runtime disassembler using Tektronix Logic Analyzers to improve visibility and check benchmark timings. Among many impressive details from my technical analysis was the unique use of a Barrel Shifter in the ARM instruction pipeline logic to save cycles in the ALU. Within a few weeks Gavarini and I started the Möbius project in Apple's Advanced Technology Group (ATG). The Möbius effort produced a complete prototype for a new Apple ][ RISC based Personal Computer. Later I presented the ARM architecture and performance benchmarks to the wider Apple engineering community. The formation of Advanced RISC Machines Ltd in 1990 (the original partnership between Apple, Acorn, and VLSI Tech.) was largely predicated on the technical success of the Möbius project within Apple ATG. The ARM microprocessor technology has become one of the most successful and widely used in the world. It is found in all Apple mobile devices such as iPhones, iPads and iWatch, and in many other products from automobiles and aircraft, to smart-phones and medical devices. In addition, as of 2020 all Apple Mac products are being transitioned to new ARM based Apple Silicon.
The comprehensive history of the ARM, entitled Mobile Unleashed, mentions our early work to bring the ARM Processor into Apple. For example:
"Tom Pittard and Paul Gavarini of ATG spotted the ARM architecture (late 1985), rightly inferring Acorn had shared 6502 experience and motives. Investigation began. Pittard and Gavarini went to work on the Möbius project. Their two-year effort created a board using a VLSI Technology ARM2 chip plus software emulating the entire Apple desktop computer lineup: a 6502 or 65C816 running Apple II code, and a 68000 running Mac code. All emulated code ran faster on the ARM2 processor than the corresponding native versions. ... Möbius terminated quietly - but Pittard kept the prototype in his office." ... "In the afterglow of Möbius, Tom Pittard did a presentation for Apple engineering teams on his benchmarks a few months after work halted. Heads turned. Of particular note were the results from Pittard's Lisp benchmarks on ARM2." ... "Tesler [Lary Tesler], a veteran of Xerox PARC and an expert on GUIs, saw Pittard's results. He grasped where the ARM architecture could take Newton [Apples first handheld device]"... "Tesler had an endgame in mind... He based that on the status of Hobbit [a competing processor design], Tom Pittard's ARM2 benchmark results, and roadmap discussions with the ARM development team."
From Wikipedia entry: Mac transition to Apple silicon => "The genesis of the third switch began in 1985, when Acorn's ARM architecture was spotted by Apple's Advanced Technology Group, an internal research laboratory. The ATG thought it might replace the MOS 6502 of the Apple II range or the 68000 of the original Macintosh, or become the basis of a tablet device, under Paul Gavarini and Tom Pittard, in a project labelled Möbius."
INDEPENDENTLY AUTHORED ACTOR FRAMEWORK: Communications Component Architecture (CCA), a distributed, concurrent active-object framework for implementing complex communications protocol systems and testharnesses. CCA implements a practical set of object abstractions from communications and protocol reference models, such as Layer Entities, Service Access Points, Protocol Data Units, and highly efficient Parallel Priority Message Queues. As such it embodies asynchronous message based communication between active objects (Actors) in layered contexts. CCA has been used to both develop and test major protocol and security infrastructures at SRI International, RSA Security, Entegrity Solutions, and Edge Dynamics. CCA is implemented as a set of C++ classes, and is extended via interface and inheritance to meet the requirements of individual deployments.
LANGUAGE, ACTION, AND COMPUTER NETWORK INTERACTION Apple Computer Technical Report No:14, Special Collections Dept. Stanford University Libraries, Material M1007 [Moved to the Online Archive of California: Apple Technical Reports Series 10: OAC.] This report was published within Apple in February 1989, several years before the introduction of the World Wide Web. The paper represents original research and contains insights regarding the linguistic and architectural structures of computer network interaction that have proved to be highly relevant over the intervening decades.
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