HP Pro UPS 500 240V ISS Technology Update, Volume 9, Number 4 - Page 6

Meet the Expert-Reza Bacchus Over a quarter century ago, a U.S. Air Force electronic technician named Reza Bacchus realized that ―it would be cool to design circuits.‖ So when he got out, he earned an Electrical Engineering degree from the University of Texas at Arlington, and eventually joined Compaq in 1995. Today, Reza holds six patents and is a Master Technologist with the HP Industry Standard Servers Platform Technology Team. Reza's current assignments include new memory technologies, memory qualification and testing strategy, as well as server platform performance analysis. Regarding new memory technologies, Reza works with industry partners to get the technical features into industry-standard specifications and then into production. He also works with HP server platform architects and designers to help guide their designs for implementation of new memory technologies-the most recent examples being low-voltage DIMMs and load-reduced DIMMs (LR-DIMMs). Reza manages the qualification process for new memory technologies at DIMM suppliers and original design manufacturer (ODM) partners. HP puts every DIMM type through an extensive memory qualification test under numerous rigorous conditions before it is added to an approved vendor list. Reza specifies the test process, duration, measurement techniques, and criteria for success. The error threshold is one, meaning that a single verifiable failure during qualification testing will disqualify a vendor. Name: Reza Bacchus Title: Master Technologist - ISS Platform Technology Years at HP: 15 University/Degree: University of Texas at Arlington. BSEE 1988 U.S. Patents: 6 Gene Freeman, Reza's manager, says: ―Whatever his technical assignments are, he makes significant contributions through a great contribution of theoretical and practical knowledge.‖ On a personal level, Gene says, ―Reza has a work ethic and attitude that make him someone you would really like to know.‖ Scouts honor Reza and his wife, Shaymela, have been married for 19 years and have four sons: Haseeb (17), Siddiq (15), Ameer (13) and Nabeel (11). Shaymela home-schools all four boys. Reza enjoys Scouting with his sons, and, he says, tries to apply in his own life the Scouts' values -- physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight. His favorite invention almost got bloody Reza's favorite invention is a redundant, cable-less, hot-pluggable, PCI Smart Array SCSI controller he co-invented in 1997. He may be able to joke about it now, but the experience was difficult at the time. He and a co-inventor were given the criteria to create a controller solution. Initially, they succeeded with all but the cable-less feature. After presenting their results to a company vice president, they were told to come back with a complete solution or a bloody forehead (from figuratively beating their heads against the wall). ―Needless to say, we made it happen.‖ says Reza, his forehead still intact. Who's the boss? Reza says that customers are the boss because practically all of their input goes into memory product decisions. His challenge is to reconcile conflicting requests from multiple customers and merge them into a single product. A trainer in demand Reza has developed several tutorials on memory technology used for internal and external training. ―His deep knowledge and excellent presentation skills have allowed him to communicate effectively to his audiences,‖ Gene says, ―allowing them to come up to speed on the fundamentals much faster than they would have without his assistance.‖ Reza's knowledge and communication skills also have produced a demand for his talents in qualification and testing, training, and difficult debug situations. His efforts have resulted in faster root-cause analysis and less downtime for customers experiencing server failures. 6