James Perkins

Current

Member of Technical Staff at Wind River
Member of Technical Staff at Wind River Systems

Past

Software Team Lead at Portland State Aerospace Society
Senior Software Engineer at Dragonfly Software Consulting Co.
Software Engineer at Tektronix

Software Engineer at Tektronix
Software Engineer at PSC, Inc.
Software Engineer at Tektronix
Student Tech at Oregon State University
Summer co-op at Portland General Electric
Dishwasher at Sambos Restaurants, Inc.

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6 more...

Education

Oregon State University
Aloha High School

Recommended

1 person has recommended James

Connections

255 connections

Industry

Computer Software

Websites

James Perkins’s Summary

Systems software programmer and designer since 1987, at the level where computer architecture and electronics components meet the operating system. This has been a lifelong personal interest area, my study through college with work-study, and a successful career.

I am currently a lead engineer, work internally with my team and outwardly with partner companies to identify specific technical capabilities and ways to realize them to satisfy our joint customers.

Since my area of present expertise is open source software I have peers and friends across the industry worldwide and local university contacts, mostly Linux Kernel developers.

James Perkins’s Specialties:

Embedded Systems, Software, Real-time, Device Optimization, MIPS, PowerPC, 68000, Metrics, Process Improvement, Lasers, Radio technology, Network Administration, Internet Protocol, Social Networking, Electronics, Schematics, Technical Writing, Writing, Partner communications, MPEG2, Codecs, Linux, UNIX, SunOS, VxWorks, System Administration, Computer Architecture

James Perkins’s Experience

Member of Technical Staff

Wind River

(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; WIND; Computer Software industry)

September 2000 — Present (9 years 3 months)

2004-present original member of Linux Distribution development team. General technical roles focused around enabling the OS to run on specific hardware. Codeveloped with Red Hat for a few months. Influenced technical direction of successful distribution. Now a Board Support Package development lead, Configuration Management system gatekeeper (keeping overall code submissions high quality and relevant), and Silicon Partner liaison for ARM, MIPS, and Intel processor families.

2000-2003 software engineering of embedded real-time operating systems low-level code for PowerPC architecture. Focused on IBM 403/405/440GP/440GX, 750CX, AltiVec. Context save and restore, exception handling, system call traps. Finally codeveloped the redesign of a generic page table and memory management system into architecture-specific and architecture-independent portions. Developed tools to package and release Board Support Packages asynchronous to the core Operating Systems release.
Member of Technical Staff

Wind River Systems

(Public Company; Computer Software industry)

2000 — Present (9 years )
Software Team Lead

Portland State Aerospace Society

(Computer Software industry)

2000 — 2002 (2 years )
Senior Software Engineer

Dragonfly Software Consulting Co.

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry)

September 1999 — September 2000 (1 year 1 month)

Contract software engineering for embedded real-time operating systems internals, focusing on low-level MIPS assembler and C code. Special focus on exception handling, context save/restore, and memory manager page table lookup.
Software Engineer

Tektronix

(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; TEK; Computer Hardware industry)

February 1999 — July 1999 (6 months)

Worked with a team of engineers developing a broadcast industry television MPEG2 encoder device which was planned to take uncompressed digital video and audio, compress and mux it into an MPEG2 data stream suitable for modulating a television transmitter. Alas, the project was shut down a few months later, but I learned a great deal about broadcast TV, MPEG2 and digital media coding, and I specified networks and fileservers for storing uncompressed digital video.
Software Engineer

Tektronix

(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; TEK; Computer Hardware industry)

September 1996 — December 1998 (2 years 4 months)

Worked in Measurement Accessory Products (MAP) on a system for small battery-powered short-distance measurement devices which could be stuck around a factory, and then read remotely via radio link to a handheld digital multimeter sort of command handheld unit. Responsible for low-level 8-bit microcontroller software and communications drivers. Developed protocol using a UART modulating an AM transceiver with AGC, and GPIO to drive the synthesizers and other devices. Lots of work with Oscilloscopes, Logic probes and exposure to RF electronic and antenna design.

Developed the web server-based configuration interface for a small Ethernet-to-GPIB Host bridge device. The software was based on VxWorks but I wrote a DHCP client and HTTP server.
Software Engineer

PSC, Inc.

(Public Company; 201-500 employees; PSCX; Consumer Electronics industry)

August 1992 — August 1996 (4 years 1 month)

Originally Spectra-Physics Scanning Systems, this private organization was purchased by PSC, Inc. I served as the embedded development toolsmith and the process improvement/metrics person to the software team responsible for the firmware on 8-, 16-, and 32-bit microcontrollers in the laser barcode scanner products. I worked on parts of the Magellan scanner and the Catalina Electronic Clearing Services coupon network interface, both of these are still in stores. I also served as company UNIX system administrator and Internet proponent, and was a balanced code/document inspection moderator. I learned a lot about DOS, PC architecture, and started hacking Linux kernels when I was here. Oddly enough, Greg Kroah-Hartmann (key Linux contributor) worked here a year after I left.
Software Engineer

Tektronix

(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; TEK; Computer Hardware industry)

June 1985 — August 1992 (7 years 3 months)

Worked in Logic Analyzers Division on the DAS 9200 logic analyzer system. Worked on all parts of the software system from 68040 exception processing code, MMU and Floppy drivers for the UNIX V7-based operating systems code, to structure design and development of the 92A16 Channel configuration and Disk Services Menu, to tools for creating and validating installation media (floppies), to reworking the configuration management and build system ('Integ' role). Really great first job (started with two co-op internships), lots of exposure to healthy work peer culture and to process improvement, and made some great life-long friends.
Student Tech

Oregon State University

(Educational Institution; 5001-10,000 employees; Computer Software industry)

September 1984 — March 1987 (2 years 7 months)

I was a student technician at the Computer Science department. I performed system backups, file restores, and general system administration when needed.
Summer co-op

Portland General Electric

(Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; Utilities industry)

June 1984 — September 1984 (4 months)

As a summer hire I handled inventory and changeout of IBM customer service terminals throughout the NW Oregon area. I also used Lotus to update a 3 million dollar budget spreadsheet, and learned APL programming on the IBM 8039 and 3090. Between these tasks I serviced magnetic tapes and provided summer relief for the mail machine operators.
Dishwasher

Sambos Restaurants, Inc.

(Public Company; Restaurants industry)

1981 — August 1983 (2 years )

Dishwasher and bus boy to earn money for college.

James Perkins’s Education

Oregon State University

BS , Computer Science , 1983 — 1987

My Senior Honors project was a talk and paper on software lock algorithms and using a software interleave matrix to show the states of two contending tasks. This diagram can show the lock is safe, fair, and live. I also did some seminar projects and learned a little bit of C programming and made some long-term friends.

Activities and Societies:

University Honors Program, Student Tech, Newman Center
Aloha High School

Additional Information

James Perkins’s Websites:

James Perkins’s Interests:

hiking, amateur radio, photography, rock music, cooking, world cuisine, home improvement, experimental rocketry

James Perkins’s Groups:

Linux kernel, ARRL, Portland State Aerospace Society, Clackamas ARES, flickr, Northwest Forest Conservancy

The Official IEEE Group
Linux Expert
Wind-X
ARRL HAM Radio Operators
Oregon State University Alumni Group
FOSS Professionals
Real-Time Embedded Engineering
Portland State University Alumni Association
American Radio Relay League (ARRL) Members (this group not sanctioned by the ARRL)
xTEK
Oregon State University EE/CS alums
Linux Symposium