Projects

Here are a few projects I have been working on in the past few years. This is only a short list; since this Website covers my teaching activities, I only listed projects that involve teaching, or technologies that I teach (like Java and networking, for the Net-Archive project below.)

Training Program Management at IIUSA I am the President and CEO of IIUSA, which is a private postsecondary school in Phoenix, Arizona. We train the general public in information technology courses that lead to industry recognized certifications, such as Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, and Sun technologies. We have an extensive military training program, covering specialized communication equipment such as Promina multiplexers, Redcom IGX telephone switches, Cisco routers, switches, and firewalls, and Microsoft servers. Our military training courses cover several tactical assets, COMSEC, and tactical and COTS network nodal management.

Computer Architecture and Organization: An Integrated Approach This is an undergraduate computer architecture textbook, published by John Wiley & Sons (2007), and available from Amazon.com among other distributors.

Principles of Computer Architecture This is an undergraduate computer architecture textbook, published by Prentice Hall in 2000.

Net-Archive Before peer-to-peer (P2P) gained popularity, I created an Internet backup system that made use of the idle time on dialup connections. At the time, more than half of Internet connections were made via phone lines. Only 90% of the uplink bandwidth is used, providing a prime opportunity for background backups without degrading the user's other activities. The project waned with the rise of broadband access and large P2P networks. It was interesting at the time: this was 1996 and it wasn't yet clear if the Web would sustain itself or collapse without a viable business model. (Ironically, the Web thrived with a myriad of unviable business models that paved the way for low cost broadband access.)

A Digital Design Methodology for Optical Computing This is a monograph published by the MIT Press in 1990, covering a method of designing free-space digital optical circuits using regular interconnects. Light travels in a straight line in free space, but unfortunately we cannot easily bend beams of light in free space the way that we can fashion wires into complex paths with photolithography. On the other hand, light beams can cross right through each other without interacting, which supports a great density of interconnection capability. This is unlike wires, which interfere just by being close to one another. The book covers a design approach that utilizes the advantages of free space optics while minimizing the lack of complexity within a plane.