HP ProLiant DL288 ISS Technology Update, Volume 7, Number 7 - Page 3

ISS Technology Update Meet the Expert-Vincent Nguyen Vincent Nguyen is an ISS Technologist with over 20 years at Compaq/HP. Vincent began as a technician and advanced to become a system architecture expert on single- and dual-socket Intel®-based ProLiant servers, which happen to be the best-selling HP servers. As a system architect, he is familiar with all aspects of the design and invention process. He is known for being very "hands-on" and he consults in numerous areas, including power management, security, and RAS (reliability, availability, and scalability). According to Gene Freeman, Vincent's manager, many of Vincent's innovations have become industry-standard features in Intel Architeture (IA) x86 and IA-64 bit server segments. Vincent has created several methodologies that have resulted in lower product development and manufacturing costs. He is also an active voice within the design centers and commonality core teams, which ensure that the various platforms have optimized, balanced architectures. Gene says that Vincent's innovations are inspired by the knowledge he gains about customers through Tech Tours and Tech Exchanges. After his invention is approved by one of the design teams, Vincent helps to work through any technological obstacles to ensure a timely product release. Vincent co-authored the 2004 Techcon paper, "Expanding Memory RASUM Features in ISS servers." The paper was selected from more than 1500 abstracts across technical communities of all HP Business Units. Vincent says that his favorite hobbies are traveling and learning about other cultures. These have given him a wider perspective, which influences his work by making him open minded to ideas from others. Gene points out that "Vincent firmly believes in teamwork and in sharing information among peers. He has a simple philosophy that no one team member knows everything." Vincent and his wife, Melanie, have three beautiful daughters ages 20, 18, and 8. Below are excerpts from an interview with Vincent. As evidenced by his responses, he is a man of few words, but many patents. The patents are listed on the right and the patents filed are listed on the following page. Why did you decide to become an engineer? There was no reason in particular. The trend at the time was toward engineering. What are your favorite inventions? The system BIOS boot-block and on-line spare/hot-plug memory inventions are my favorites. They have become industry-standard features today. I developed a prototype board that implemented a boot block feature to prevent the total loss of ROM code if a catastrophic event occurred during a ROM upgrade. I also developed the first on-line spare and hot plug/redundant memory controller in the PC server industry. I designed discrete logic on the ProLiant DL380 G2 server to detect a faulty DIMM and then fail over to an on-line spare memory DIMM. I also designed a memory board that implemented the hot plug concept to interface with the RCC Champion 1.0 chipset. I also wrote the ROM code and worked with several NT developers to modify the OS to support "Hot Add/Replace" memory when a DIMM was inserted or replaced. Volume 7, Number 7 Name: Vincent Nguyen Title: ISS Technologist Years at HP: 20 Education: • University of Houston Bachelor of Science, Electrical Engineering, 1992 U.S. Patents: • Patent #7107493: System and method for testing memory errors in a computer system. Nguyen, V., Depew, K.; 9/12/06 • Patent #7035953: Computer system architecture with hot pluggable memory board. Krontz, J., Depew, K., Nguyen, J., Heinrich, D., Engler, D., Nguyen, V., Dow, R., Kidwai, O.; 4/25/06 • Patent #6487623: Replacement, upgrade and/or addition of hotpluggable components in a computer. Emerson, T., Nguyen, V., Michels, P., Clohset, S.; 11/26/02 • Patent #6401157: Hot-pluggable component detection logic. Nguyen, V., Emerson, T.; 6/04/02 • Patent #6055582: SCSI duplex ready backplane for selectively enabling SCSI simplex and duplex modes based on indication of desired SCSI mode ; Pascarella, R., Nguyen, V.; 4/25/00 • Patent #5867676: Reset circuit for a peripheral component interconnect bus. Nguyen, V., Brownell, P.; 2/02/99 3