Derek White

Current

• Staff Engineer at Sun Microsystems

Past

• Senior Software Engineer at Novell
• Staff Engineer at Sun Microsystems
• Software Engineer at Apple

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Education

• Drexel University

Connections

15 connections

Industry

Computer Software

Websites

• My Blog
• Squawk Open Source Project
• SunSPOTWorld

Derek White’s Summary

Derek White is a Staff Engineer for Sun Microsystems Laboratories, working on the Squawk project. After working for years on enabling Java to scale up to large CMT systems, he is now helping Java scale down to embeddable dimensions.

Initiated efforts at Sun to get Java ported and accepted as language for FIRST Robotics Competition. Organized Sun's volunteer and promotionl efforts for FIRST.

Previously he worked on Java simulation and performance analysis for Niagara processors, garbage collection and JVM performance issues at Sun Labs, a JVM for an unnamed 64-bit OS at Novell, and the Dylan programming language and development environment at Apple Computer, Inc.

His research interests include application instrospection (profiling, monitoring, debugging, Compilation, Debugging, Distributed Systems, Garbage Collection, Java, JVM, Object Oriented Programming, Operating Systems, Performance Analysis, Programming Languages, Robots, User Interfaces, Virtual Machines and Wireless sensor networks.

Derek White’s Specialties:

Making sense of large, complex software systems (no matter how small the hardware).

Programming, Java, Virtual Machines, Garbage Collection, Native Interfaces, Research.

Derek White’s Experience

• Staff Engineer

  Sun Microsystems

  (Public Company; JAVA; Information Technology and Services industry)

  2003 — Present (6 years )

  Research, design, and implement the Squawk Java Virtual Machine for small (http://www.sunspotworld.com) and smaller devices. Squawk is open source at http://squawk.dev.java.net
  
  Initiated Sun's relationship with FIRST (http://usfirst.org) that resulted in Java for the FIRST Robotics Competition. Oversaw development/port of Java for the compactRIO control system.

• Senior Software Engineer

  Novell

  (Public Company; NOVL; Computer Software industry)

  1999 — 2001 (2 years )

  Advanced Technology Group (also as part of Volera spin-out).
  Developed Apache Module Interface-like interface for extensible code to run in a high performance proxy server.
  Developed Java interface to allow "proxylet" applications to be written in Java.
  Helped implement JDK 1.2 for various Novell OSes.

• Staff Engineer

  Sun Microsystems

  (Public Company; JAVA; Computer Hardware industry)

  1995 — 1999 (4 years )

  In Sun Labs, redesigned and reimplemented parts of Java Virtual Machine (JVM), including Garbage Collection (GC), Java Native interface (JNI). System released as Java system for Solaris.

• Software Engineer

  Apple

  (Public Company; AAPL; Computer Hardware industry)

  1988 — 1995 (7 years )

  Helped implement the Dylan programming language runtime and IDE. Designed extensions to Object Pascal to interface with C++, represented Apple on the ANSI Pascal committee. Lead programmer on the Object Pascal compiler.

Derek White’s Education

• Drexel University

  BS , Computer Science , 1983 — 1988

Additional Information

Derek White’s Websites:

• My Blog
• Squawk Open Source Project
• SunSPOTWorld

Derek White’s Interests:

Programming, robotics

Derek White’s Groups:

•    The Drexel University Alumni Association Networking Group
•    Sun Spots Robotics
•    FIRST Robotics
•    JavaOne Conference
•    Sun SPOT
•    Drexel Boston

Derek White’s Honors:

2008, Sun's Innovation Award (with Sun SPOT team)

PATENTS:
5,873,104; 5,873,105; 5,857,210:
"Bounded-pause time garbage collection system and method including write barrier associated with a source instance of a partially relocated object" and variations.

6,005,566: "Aspect and style elements of an improved graphical user interface."

6,173,442: "Busy-wait-free synchronization."

6,253,215: "Method, apparatus, and article of manufacture for facilitating resource management for applications having two types of program code."

Derek White’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

• career opportunities
• expertise requests
• getting back in touch