Vincent Zimmer's blog: books

Showing posts with label books. Show all posts

Friday, November 29, 2024

Turbulent weather, books, and new jobs

Weather issues https://mynorthwest.com/4010489/cliff-mass-warns-of-powerful-storm-approaching-western-washington/ have impacted the region recently. The power at my home was out for a few days but I was able to reach the office. While there I recall one conversation from a colleague "Power outages in India, not just this long." A similar sentiment was express by a Brazilian co-worker. I suppose the outage reflects the pleasure and peril of the Pacific Northwest with its significant old growth and above-ground power lines. One challenge this offered was having to take a 4am PST call from the office to deliver a talk https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1gbKhl3ncwRm0QB1ZD3xZhjhRFWxUp_dKtdnQemtpoX0/edit?usp=sharing to an open source firmware event in Germany at https://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/en.

Part of my Franken-prezo can be seen below. It was pieced together from old public slides spanning CanSecWest '15 in Vancouver BC through Hacker-to-Hacker circa late '23 in São Paulo, Brazil, viz.,

Recently a local university asked me to give their students a talk on BIOS. I agreed on the conditions that it wasn't at 4am PST and that it was in-person. If they had asked last week I would have added the additional proviso of not occurring during a post wind-pocalypse power outage :)

Given this is a blog that purports to cover musings on firmware and UEFI, I figured that I'd note that recent event.

Speaking of firmware, before this talk and continuing in the spirit of this blog's theme there was an Intel blog posting related to the Open Computing Project Summit recently about open source server host firmware https://community.intel.com/t5/Blogs/Tech-Innovation/Data-Center/Advancing-Open-Source-Firmware-on-Intel-Xeon-6-Based-Platforms/post/1636720

Postings like this and recent work by 9e mentioned in https://www.phoronix.com/news/9elements-SkylakeX-Coreboot are always nice to see as they describe work with provides community choice and offers additional insight into how this class of platform is built. In addition, this work potentially heightens awareness of the circular economy.

This above-cited blog post-dated my time at Intel and pre-dated my time at.....at.....

As I mentioned in https://vzimmer.blogspot.com/2024/09/reflecting-on-my-time-at-tech-company.html, I felt a bit nervous about retiring when everyone was telling me that I was 'too young.' As such, I cut my retirement a bit short and recently joined a new tech company

(ID# blinded in picture).

The Microsoft experience has been pretty interesting so far. The old and new commute only differ by a small distance shown below. In fact I had taken that trek a few times in the past, both walking during the summer months and driving during the rainy days when collaborating with Microsoft as an Intel employee.

And the Microsoft campus here in Redmond, WA is sprawling. I initially found myself using a maps application on my phone to navigate both walking through and driving across the campus. To my delight, one location I found was a physical library in Microsoft building 92. Real books, not epubs and mobis and pdfs and html renderings.....! And to my surprise there were a couple of familiar titles on the shelves, including a couple of host firmware texts - https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781501505751/html?lang=en and https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781501505690/html?lang=en.

And now the latter has been YouTube-ized https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrkX4tdg49s.

When I related this library finding to former Intel colleague (now an eng at AMD?) he shared a snapshot of the books on his home office desktop, including https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-BIOS-Developing-Extensible-Interface/dp/1934053295/.

Speaking of firmware books, Jiming Sun's presentation https://talks.osfc.io/osfc-2024/talk/G8RDEX/ on firmware requirements from a CSP provided a unique perspective.

He also mentioned at the 11:10 minute mark some background on FSP and the embedded firmware book https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4842-0070-4, too. Therein he noted the popularity of the book by way of the site https://bookauthority.org/books/best-firmware-books.

#1 firmware book? Fascinating metric. I'm not sure about the dataset used to generate that ranking. Although now at Amazon AWS, Jiming was a good collaborator during our joint tenure at Intel.

On the topic of books, on the Weds workday ahead of the T-day holiday I found another surprise when a coworker dropped by my touchdown/temporary office with one of the firmware books in hand https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4842-7939-7

I like books. And doors on offices are another fascinating phenomena after several decades of largely living in a cubicle.

Moving beyond the topic of books and continuing with co-workers theme, I see that another former Intel co-worker has left the blue building (Inside Blue to Outside Blue, departed the Blue Planet, gone from being an In-tel to an Out-tel?) is the other half of the 300-issued-patents duo of 2014 https://vzimmer.blogspot.com/2022/09/new-milestones.html who has a new opportunity https://natcast.org/natcast-announces-dr-robert-chau-svp-research

I guess the lure of the 'enhanced retirement package' of September drew him out, too? Maybe it was the new job title and mission which both sound pretty cool.

Speaking of retirement, or now post-retirement, since landing at MS I've tried to look up some former collaborators like https://www.linkedin.com/in/vkurien/ mentioned in https://vzimmer.blogspot.com/2023/02/blue-hat-2023-and-uefi-secure-boot.html but noticed that he's been gone for some time. During this inquiry I observed an interesting aspect of his profile that includes a mention of our joint work, viz., "Co-invented UEFI secure boot with Vincent Zimmer of Intel. UEFI boot vulnerabilities were identified by a novel information flow modeling technique. "

I don't recall ever showing up in someone's LI experience listing. Interesting.

Although I started the blog grousing about weather maladies I really cannot complain so much. Another "Vincent Zimmer" has had it much worse recently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db9lTZiUgt8 it appears.

On the flip side, when I was leaving Intel, there was a session where the team was queried about what folks thought the imminent retirees would do post-Intel. One suggestion for me was a future as a patent attorney, and another suggestion was that I'd give a Ted Talk. On the latter suggestion it looks like another "Vincent Zimmer" beat me to the punch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKdCsk3Yw-U. I think that disqualifies me for a future Ted Talk - speaker name hash collision rule :)

On the topic of the former suggestion of going back to school in the above-listed bon voyage meeting, I attended a Saturday conference https://con.racket-lang.org/ on the Racket programming language during my retirement windows between Intel and MS. During the lunch break-out at UW Kane Hall I expressed my interest in pursuing more formal graduate education when the PhD candidate to my left mentioned "yes, I'm in year 10 of my PHD program. I had to switch advisors and topics." Hmm. Given those types of statistics it would be a foot race between a PHD and Medicare eligibility for me. There were some interesting talks at the conference, though, including a keynote from the SICP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_of_Computer_Programs authors

I really enjoyed their first-person view of technology and personal journies therein.

And the conference shared other other bon mots on programming. Some may think Racket (and functional programming languages like Lisp in general) is so far from mainstream languages that there is little value in delving into these alt-langs, but I'm always surprised at the cross over of ideas from one language community to another or how a clean, pedagogic language can clarify your thinking on a subject.

Maybe I'll just continue the auto-didactic path and see if I can audit some uni courses of interest? I still remember Richard Ladner's https://www.cs.washington.edu/people/faculty/ladner late 1990's wisdom during my UW CS algorithms course - "What I teach you this quarter will become irrelevant soon, but what I can impart to you all is to teach you how to teach yourself and learn on your own." One of these AI sessions reminded me of this spirit in the slide below.

Speaking of gifts that keep on giving.....

Of course even Racket conference touched on AI, mostly via a spoof of LLMs by one UBC prof.

On a more serious approach to AI, though, I did attend a few IEEE-sponsored IEEE AI events on the UW campus and in Seattle, too.

I have to confess that the half-dozen LLM and AI texts & papers on my desk didn't receive as much, er, 'attention' (pun intended https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762), as I'd like to have applied during the 4 week retirement.

So this is nice symmetry. The blog opened with describing a talk to university students and ended with some wistful higher education sentiments. Not quite Finnegans' Wake of the first and last sentence running together, but good enough for JIT blog-writing I suppose.

I am still holding out using copilot or gemini or chatgpt or locally phi/llama/qwen/.... by way of ollama to create and/or polish these postings. I guess I like to maintain the raw, natural intelligence (or natural obtuseness) feel versus the polished AI-driven edits/creation. I am curious about other's thoughts on the topic. Maybe I'm just another John Henry versus the machine on this one....But in other activities these tools are amazing....Maybe just for this blog I've leave them out and keep it's artisanal feel :)

And so much for a November posting. Churn in the weather and the tech employment scene seem to be the themes of this posting.

Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Reflecting on my time at a tech company (aka 'Retiring from Intel')

I've queued up some blog drafts over the last couple of months but I haven't been able to generate the energy to finish them. They just didn't seem to have enough bulk to them.

So why posting now and with this 'new' content?

Well, I want to share that I have elected to retire from Intel after 27.5 years. My last day will be September 30. While I'm moving on to the next chapter of life, I'll always cherish the time I spent at Intel.

And in fact it is with no small amount of temerity I write this message, especially after receiving so many soulful and impactful farewell messages recently from Intel colleagues also opting into this retirement package. I'm somewhat 'late' in penning my message, I'm afraid (at this point in time I haven't sent out the broad bcc'd "I'm leaving" email). And then there's my all-time favorite parting message I captured from Sham at the end of the https://vzimmer.blogspot.com/2023/05/open-platforms-snapshot-may-2023.html posting that I could never hope to emulate.

But emulate I won't. In fact, I'll write this as I do most of my postings, sort of a rambling message to myself; on this sentiment I'm apparently not alone given quote of another 1.5 decade blogger "I keep this blog for me to write, not necessarily for others to read." https://www.jonashietala.se/blog/2024/09/25/why_i_still_blog_after_15_years/. For this particular post I couldn't figure out where to insert a 'TL;DR' since I sometimes think that could be the title or theme of this whole blog series :) I only regret that I won't have a reason to author a successor to https://vzimmer.blogspot.com/2024/02/27-or-anniversarynext12-ai-runtime.html.

So for more of the TL 'too long," rewind the clock 32.5 years to my first five years post-undergrad in industry prior to Intel. In those early days of 1992 back in Houston I was introduced to BIOS and embedded firmware development using Intel technology, from the i8051 through i80186 … and culminating with the P6. Beyond the data sheets, I also immersed myself deeply in Intel driven specifications like PCI and I2O (although forgotten by PCI SIG and intel.com, many still live on at https://bitsavers.org/pdf/intel/). These experiences ranged from poring over the black cover data public tomes of data books to the yellow-cover NDA documents, while continually being intrigued by what was happening at Intel via reading reports on the company in print periodicals like EE Times; this was the early 90’s prior to the internet going big.

Who knows? Maybe some of the work I contributed to at Intel, whether papers or books or specifications such as mentioned in https://vzimmer.blogspot.com/2021/01/books-and-computers.html, might end up at bitsavers some day, say Beyond BIOS https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Bios-Implementing-Extensible-Interface/dp/0974364908 will have a URL like the RMX book http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/intel/iRMX/iRMX_III/Real-Time_and_Systems_Programming_for_PCs_1993.pdf?

Given my early exposure to Intel, imagine my delight in getting recruited by Intel to lead the development of Itanium firmware for the Merced CPU in late 1996 and joining the Intel High-End Server Division (HESD) in February 1997 in DuPont WA. The Intel recruiter told me that I could ‘go to Hillsboro for Xeon or Dupont for Itanium.’ I wasn’t familiar w/ any place in the PNW so the obvious choice was to join the Intel 64-bit wave! Prior to joining Intel, I still recall my Compaq manager saying when I served notice “I guess you’re going to Portland Oregon” when in fact I was heading to Washington state. Commencing in ’97 I was now part of the mission to help create the technology behind those great products and standards I’d admired so much.

Since then, I truly realized the saying of Steve Jobs 'The only way to do great work is to love what you do,' and I've truly loved working alongside such talented and dedicated individuals in this work. That was the missing link from my pre-Intel days, namely the broad experience with Intel employees.

Speaking of people and technology and standards, now more than half my life, or these last 27.5 years at Intel, have more than exceeded my hopes, but it’s the people with whom I’ve collaborated, learned, and grown I appreciate the most. Thank you all for creating a positive and inspiring work environment. From co-creators of the SAL+NuBiOS & SAL+AMI ‘Salami’ firmware for Merced in HESD, the Workstation Product Group (WPG) Kittyhawk native C code that booted Intel P3 on 840 Rambus and Merced 460GX w/ either the AMI 630 ‘furball’ or the EFI sample as the late-stage payloads. Then off to Microcomputer Software Lab (MSL) in MD6 to work on the hit series of scaling EFI from 0.92 to today’s UEFI 2.11, along with “Tiano” that yielded EDK->EDKII and the Intel Platform innovation Framework for the Extensible Firmware Interface (e.g., “Framework”) specifications that have become the UEFI Platform Initialization (PI) specifications of today. This latter work spanned orgs from MSL to EPG to SEG to SSG to SATG to DEG to my final home here in CCG. I guess the only platform group I missed was embedded, although I enjoyed collaborating with those folks from ACSFL in the late 90’s to today’s slim bootloader.

I suppose I can date the badges by BDE or ADE ('Before drop-e' or 'After drop-e') https://vzimmer.blogspot.com/2014/01/advances-in-platform-firmware-beyond.html.

It’s open source platform code like slim bootloader, coreboot, and EDKII features/platforms that have occupied the last 10 years of scaling the Firmware Support Package (FSP), ….. along with the primary mission of FSP to have a clear business boundary between Intel owned versus customer codes. With this last decade also including contributing to NIST 800-193 platform firmware resiliency and recovery. And and and ….

...and booting. Measured boot, UEFI Secure boot, ipv6 boot/netboot6, HTTP boot, boot-from-Wifi.....Sometimes I'd use 'booting from a sneaker' as a variant of the Toaster or Fabrikam sort of pedagogic fake device, but given Bluetooth and smart accessories/shoes I suspect this one will fall into the 'life imitates art.'

And I could take a whole detour on security and friends long past. Someone said I was the final member of the below bench to exit. John of PSIRT, Yuriy of threat research, Kirk of all-things-SMM security, ... Zimmer as the UEFI security guy. I still recall a colleague saying 'bring boxes of the Intel Press Beyond BIOS and Shell books. The visitors will love them.' Given the muscle ache from both lugging them down to Portland and back to Seattle I couldn't help but think of the Harold Ramis quote in Ghostbusters that 'print is dead.' Even those many years ago no one wanted those bulky dead-tree texts.

Beyond the tech milestones, I still recall a few words of wisdom from a now-retired colleague. One was ‘the best architecture is sometimes knowing what to leave out’ (I heard it but didn’t necessarily always practice it) and the other was ‘I don’t know why people don’t get it, but BIOS can be a great career.’ And a great Intel career it has been. Another was ‘the higher leadership ascends you’ll find the more impactful decisions they have to make with successively less information.’ So my take away is that you should take it easy on the bosses, especially in tough times.

And there is my 3-tuple of advice I sometimes give others and myself: ‘business first, team second, and career third.’ To me this means focus on the business priorities first, even if they transcend your team’s charter. Next help develop and foster a strong team environment for the mission to collaborate on these business challenges. And a distant third is your career. I don’t mean to imply career growth is unimportant but more that if you focus on the business priorities and the team, a well-managed company will acknowledge your efforts.

Also, observe where the interesting problems are being worked and good team cultures exist. Given that insight, when given the opportunity to engage in such focus areas and collaborators it may help your career long term. And 'keep learning.' This may sound a bit strange coming from me since a boss recently said ‘...and if you don’t want to keep learning then just “retire”. I personally hope to do both, but the exhortation to 'keep learning' is golden irrespective of one's employer or employment state or age or.....

And given this is a wrap-up sort of blog, I've probably repeated a few themes mentioned before. Some are quite important, though, such as 'it's the people that matter.' Projects and tech come and go. The people are the key invariant of value. For example, sometimes folks think I get excited by books and patents, but it's the co-authors and co-inventors that thrill me. I may forget a book chapter or set of independent claims, but I'll never forget the rich set of colleagues with whom I toiled shoulder-to-shoulder on these endeavors. And these endeavors match my triad of biz/team/career in that they were all done to help further a business strategy, secondarily they entailed team collaboration (sometimes co-authors outside of team or company), and at the end of the day, they may have helped (or hindered) my career arc. As long as I hit #1 and #2, though, I'm at peace.

Other wisdom? Don't bash other technology. I still regret writing

twenty years ago in https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377810413_TechnologyIntel_Magazine_-_Advances_in_Platform_Firmware_Beyond_BIOS_and_Across_all_Intel_R_Silicon. You win by being good, not by belittling the competition. And the fact that the PC industry for 20+ years had shipped on this 'monolithic', 'space constrained' BIOS rebutted my argument And to be honest, Tiano in 2004 wasn't the exemplar of software quality and stability.

I find a kindred soul in Prof G's advice that 'work life balance is a myth' https://www.raconteur.net/talent-culture/scott-galloway-work-life-balance-work-from-home but the part I perhaps erred on is ignoring the qualifier 'when you are young.' I have kept this unbalance through 3+ decades :) But it has been a great trip and I can see doing more when there are opportunities to dent some more https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/950437-we-re-here-to-put-a-dent-in-the-universe-otherwise.

I not sure what the next phase of the journey will be, but I couldn't help but laugh when reading this cartoon from the New Yorker recently. I sort of put my own spin on it, although some may say it reads well in its original.

And I sure have quite a reading backlog to attack (see background of posts like https://vzimmer.blogspot.com/2021/11/books-old-age.html).

Regarding timing of this event, my Fidelity advisor said 'you can retire but there is the risk of you getting bored.' And a retiring Intel security Fellow opined 'you are too young to retire.' In retrospect I realize that I may be a bit junior to many of the 'retirement' cohort I see exiting since I dove head-first into tech w/o MS+PhD or military or ...et al hang-time. But given the exponential arcs of so much happening in tech and the richness of the world, I suspect I can find many a palliative to the specter of boredom (more 'dent' opportunities - see above).

Speaking of 'fellow,' that was definitely a milestone I had hoped to achieve in my quarter-century tenure at Intel. I try not to be sour grapes and think of the externally-hired-in fellows who only had to align with Professor Galloway's 'it's easy to fall in love with someone for an hour' when comparing external versus internal promotions. Instead I'd say Intel offered many open doors for me and perhaps I simply stumbled into the door jam? It was never aspiring toward the fellow role just for the sake of the title. Instead, I view achieving a fellow promotion as both an acknowledgement of the observed fellow-level impact plus the ability to have more insight into and ability to help advise the business (i.e., a bigger platform to help make those 'dents in the universe').

Regarding that out-of-reach cohort, I did have a chance to leave a small mark for system software next to the Fellows and Senior Fellows, as chronicled in https://vzimmer.blogspot.com/2021/07/patents-and-co-inventors.html and https://vzimmer.blogspot.com/2022/09/new-milestones.html. Recall the century-milestones I related of:

Sr. Fellow (13) Glenn Hinton in architecture https://www.anandtech.com/show/16438/new-intel-ceo-making-waves-rehiring-retired-cpu-architects on 11/06 reached 100 issued US Patents
Sr. Fellow Robert Chau (13) in process technology https://medium.com/performance-at-intel/a-bright-future-for-moores-law-9adc7d4bd39d on 3/10 reached 200 issued US Patents
Sr. Principal Engineer (11) Vincent Zimmer in system firmware on 7/14 reached 300 issued US Patents

From https://levels.fyi

If not fellow, I have at least tried to level up to my 'Senior' taxonomy this year, though, by applying for senior member status of the ACM https://awards.acm.org/senior-members/award-recipients?year=2024&award=159&region=&submit=Submit&isSpecialCategory=

and the IEEE, respectively

I just made it into 'senior member' under the 30 year milestone of my time with IEEE, for example. So I'm exiting this tech company as a pure-play 'senior' (e.g., Intel Sr. PE, Sr. member ACM, Sr. member IEEE), it seems. What's next on the 'senior' theme? More senior moments undoubtedly, sliding into senior citizen-hood, ....?

So now to prepare for the next months. One colleague who left from another tech company years ago into Intel told me it took him 2 years to get over leaving his last shop. And another colleague who left Intel for a FAANG company a couple of years ago told me that you fade away quickly from people's memories at Intel, easily within 2 years (2 mos., 2 days, 2 hrs?). So I guess the overlap is 'getting over' job.last and being forgotten by colleagues.last :)

Time. Time. As I sit on 12 weeks of accumulated sabbatical (closing in on 16) & a vacation free recent couple of years, I suppose the universe with this 'enhanced retirement package' has finally figured out a way to make me close my Intel laptop lid. And close it I shall.

In closing, my personal tell is that once I’m done with the meat of a conversation I start philosophizing too much. And on that note it’s time to end this conversation since my philosophizing has eaten the word budget on this post more than usual.

Thank you all and good-bye,

Vincent

PS if you ever need to contact me, my info is at the top of https://sites.google.com/site/vincentzimmer/cv

Saturday, October 8, 2022

A Tale of Two Books

Let's start this blog by mentioning a recent specification posting, namely the 2.4 version of the FSP https://cdrdv2.intel.com/v1/dl/getContent/736809 that can be found at https://github.com/intel/FSP/wiki. One notable aspect of this specification is that several of the capabilities were incubated as part of the Universal Scalable Firmware (USF)

[from https://universalscalablefirmware.github.io/documentation/1_terminology.html] effort https://github.com/universalscalablefirmware, including 64-bit FSP https://github.com/UniversalScalableFirmware/fspsdk/tree/qemu_fsp_x64 and SMM in FSP https://github.com/UniversalScalableFirmware/fspsdk/tree/qemu_fsp_x64_smm. The former was done by Maurice Ma, as noted by the github history, and the latter by Ravi. Another aspect of doing this work in the open was fabricating a QEMU-based FSP so that the platform code could be ported for these FSP interface changes. In the past the lack of a fully open source set of silicon code inhibited these what-if exercises (although we did have a public FSP for Quark Galileo but this was limited to a single, 32-bit CPU configuration). This continues a great collaboration with those colleagues, among many others, as cataloged by documents like https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/content-details/671333/a-tour-beyond-bios-using-the-intel-firmware-support-package-1-0-with-the-edk-ii.html.

For the SMM work in FSP 2.4 there is also the foundational efforts around having the stand-alone SMM incubated in https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/content-details/671459/a-tour-beyond-launching-standalone-smm-drivers-in-the-pei-phase-using-the-edk-ii.html and subsequently introduced into the UEFI PI spec as the "Portable Management Mode (SMM)." This work in '15 presaged this '22 FSP 2.4 work, viz.

Maurice and David are now at Microsoft and Giri is at Apple. Luckily I had a shot of David from those days we were both at Intel (the left picture) and I was also able to commemorate the Giri and Maurice collaboration in the past in http://vzimmer.blogspot.com/2016/04/colleagues-across-pacific_5.html,

respectively, from the snapshot. Regrettably we missed Ravi at that lunch so I'll have to lift his photo from https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4842-0070-4.

Speaking of former colleagues and collaborators, a couple of books I co-authored with Subrata Banik have been published, namely "Firmware Development - A Guide to Specialized Systemic Knowledge" https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4842-7974-8

and "System Firmware - An Essential Guide to Open Source and Embedded Solutions" https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4842-7939-7.

This effort started in the middle of the COVID crisis while Subrata and I both worked at Intel, namely with a publisher discussion in December of 2020. It followed on the heals of completing the "Building Secure Firmware - Armoring the Foundation of the Platform" https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4842-6106-4 which was published in October 2020 and featured Jiewen Yao as a co-author. You'll notice Jiewen

as the lead author of the '14 whitepaper on FSP mentioned at the top of the blog, and also the author of the FSP measurement paper https://cdrdv2.intel.com/v1/dl/getContent/644001 listed in https://github.com/intel/FSP/wiki (which also references this latter Apress security book). This complements the presentation https://uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/Traceable%20Firmware%20Bill%20of%20Materials%20-%2020211207%20-%20007.pdf from last December, too.

Regrettably the paths of Shanghai and Issaquah haven't crossed in a while

as you'll see with the next co-author below.

So the Jiewen book published in October 2020, and the two with Subrata in October 2022. That's 2000pp in the space of two years. Yikes.

Although I don't have a photo with Jiewen, I did manage to dig up a photo with Subrata

These encounters are tougher as Subrata spends most of his time home overseas and also now works at Google. I was happy to run into Subrata as he transited through Santa Clara by way of Bangalore and I did the same by way of Issaquah, WA.

Another nice aspect of co-authoring this last series of books is getting recommendations on the back cover, including the following.

I've had the honor to work with Mallik in the past while at Intel and also when he moved to Microsoft, including efforts like https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/content-details/671185/challenges-for-uefi-and-the-cloud.html

I have probably known Mallik the longest of the list, commencing with our work at Intel in DuPont, WA in the early 2000's. Mallik also shows up in the Beyond BIOS 1st edition https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-BIOS-Implementing-Extensible-Interface/dp/0974364908

from 2006. Other notables there includes https://uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/UEFI%20RoT%20white%20paper_Final%208%208%2016%20%28003%29.pdf

collaborator Michael Krau, who sadly passed recently, and now-retired former colleague Lee Rosenbaum of Excite https://www.usenix.org/conference/woot15/workshop-program/presentation/bazhaniuk and Secure Boot https://github.com/tianocore-docs/Docs/blob/master/White_Papers/A_Tour_Beyond_BIOS_into_UEFI_Secure_Boot_White_Paper.pdf collaboration. Glad to see Rob Branch on that list. I still fondly remember him from my Intel October 1996 job interview team at Cornell Oaks in Oregon.

As always in this industry, I get excited by the technology but I truly cherish the interactions and the people. This blog provides some highlights on both dimensions of the journey. Still great technical collaborators that may have comprised the set COLLAB15 = {Intel, Intel, Intel, Intel, Intel, Intel, Intel, Microsoft,...} and now looks like COLLAB22= {Intel, Intel, Intel, Microsoft, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Microsoft,...}.

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

1000. Lies, #$(@ lies, and statistics

It was with some regret that I learned a colleague I admire is retiring. After our last meeting he shared the following picture from osfc 2018 that he took while we were in Germany.

https://2018.osfc.io/speakers/vincent-zimmer.html with the prezo https://2018.osfc.io/uploads/talk/paper/1/OSFC_Keynote-005.pdf

Speaking of osfc, my most recent osfc prezo https://talks.osfc.io/osfc2021/talk/HYZL3U/

mentions some upcoming books https://www.amazon.com/Firmware-Development-Specialized-Systemic-Knowledge/dp/1484279735/ and https://www.amazon.com/System-Firmware-Essential-Embedded-Solutions/dp/1484279387

Speaking of books and the arc of history, my co-author on the UEFI Shell and Beyond Bios books Mike Rothman shared w/ me his recent fan-driven wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._A._Rothman. On that page I noticed the assertion "He holds over 1000 patents worldwide." This made me curious about how the page author ascertained that number.

As folks can see from the link, Mike has elected to spend his after-hours on writing sci-fi and fantasy books, whereas my spare hours continue on tech books, patents, etc. Given our split in paths, I was curious how close I was to 1000 given his claim above.

To begin my search, I found the old-ish https://goodip.io/iq/assignee/intel-corp where I note that neither Mike or I are listed. Most of the folks there are microarchitecture and process technology. And given it's an old page, I suspect their #'s are much larger and wouldn't imply Mike or I entering that top 10 international.

For the next examination, from my earlier analysis http://vzimmer.blogspot.com/2021/07/patents-and-co-inventors.html I note that Rothman was in the high 200's on US patent grants (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prolific_inventors at 284 now).

Given that data, so how does the 1000 number come about?

Perhaps there is some confusion about espacenet, namely the link cited in the above wikipedia page https://worldwide.espacenet.com/searchResults?DB=EPODOC&IN=%22Michael+Rothman%22+or+%22Rothman+Michael%22 which lists 737 results for Mike. Regrettably 737 includes US applications and issued, so it's not so easy to glean international issued/granted from that #.

For example, my variant of above link is https://worldwide.espacenet.com/searchResults?DB=EPODOC&IN=vincent%20zimmer&ST=advanced&compact=false&locale=en_EP and lists 1265 items. I don't believe that's correct for me, either, for global granted patents.

So what is the truth?

I finally did some digging on my list and came up with the following #'s from my granted patents over the past 25+ years -

All patents (US + world) - 1037 as of 4/11/2022.

This means 459 US patents granted and 578 non-US patents granted.

The details of US and non-US grant numbers include:

11,074,085

11,249,748

10,761,951

11,061,692

10,929,146

10,852,988

10,649,918

10,382,489

10,251,060

10,564,986

6,633,964

10,262,140

10,031,993

7,392,371

ZL02825773.1

1485797

1068972

1485797

6,848,046

ZL02809670.3

10296798

1075718

10-0729793

7,260,848

7,103,529

ZL02819232.X

10297273

10-0692346

10,601,955

10,540,193

10,180,800

10,768,863

3382593

602018012850.6

3382593

10,546,156

10,474,473

10,503,523

10,394,295

10,552,613

6,978,018

7,243,353

6,775,728

ZL02822826.X

60217394.9

1449077

7,200,758

ZL200380105401.3

10393456

2410819

244483

4855679

5551130

I277904

7,127,579

7,254,676

ZL200380103263.5

2409747

4220469

I242746

7,143,277

7,543,048

7,974,416

9,026,773

10,275,598

ZL200380104038.3

2411989

2421612

I238357

7,320,052

8,130,960

8,842,837

6,996,641

6,993,608

7,082,523

7,263,605

8,108,665

ZL200380105211.1

10393859

2411498

I237790

7,080,246

7,421,431

7,653,808

7,583,591

7,231,512

7,681,027

7,222,258

7,284,136

7,107,440

7,549,055

8,010,799

8,364,974

9,710,647

7,134,125

7,395,420

8,281,116

7,082,509

7,136,994

7,107,441

7,174,451

7,051,215

ZL200480016970.5

602004041688.6

1634170

I247489

7,934,209

7,318,171

ZL200480005327.2

2414318

1077117

222852

I261748

7,444,667

7,222,339

7,328,340

ZL200480018100.1

7,475,233

ZL03156077.6

7,188,238

7,200,772

7,587,750

7,134,007

ZL200480018034.8

602004042829.9

1636696

4242420

1636696

7,730,205

7,478,141

7,082,527

7,483,974

7,146,512

7,107,388

7,159,105

7,243,167

7,478,176

7,380,136

7,434,231

7,562,230

8,127,150

ZL200480037167.X

121324

I280022

7,299,354

7,370,324

7,162,626

7,275,152

7,165,170

7,181,610

7,539,854

7,194,612

7,174,447

7,751,584

7,127,600

7,206,931

7,185,188

8,001,348

8,161,258

8,583,888

7,930,378

7,222,062

7,143,280

7,174,471

I265405

7,353,339

ZL200480038646.3

I292095

7,207,039

7,448,030

7,162,629

7,496,961

7,334,120

7,120,778

7,321,990

7,185,190

7,302,593

7,281,243

7,263,579

7,984,237

7,350,072

7,203,808

7,398,401

7,318,150

7,552,419

7,234,054

7,363,482

7,853,742

ZL200580013217.5

602005041610.2

1749266

4601665

1749266

7,421,533

7,739,527

7,269,768

7,048,877

7,290,178

7,340,616

7,788,460

7,370,188

7,543,166

8,943,346

7,310,725

7,364,087

7,243,222

7,246,224

7,281,124

7,653,727

ZL200580006193.0

602005047030.1

1727625

4664966

10-0855803

ZL200580006194.5

1728376

4579969

10-0831437

7,117,083

7,426,542

7,406,591

7,310,742

7,290,166

7,698,487

8,082,470

7,594,124

8,225,101

8,751,813

7,558,966

7,430,683

7,757,231

5042848

10-0984203

7,472,208

7,840,736

7,506,149

8,245,019

ZL200580017448.3

602005028329.3

1761837

4774049

7,711,965

9,135,470

9,654,464

9,942,219

ZL200580033440.6

602005047110.3

1805572

I314684

7,826,835

ZL200510132102.X

602005048479.5

1825703

4575958

10-1018213

7,181,293

7,305,544

8,745,364

7,366,891

7,383,450

7,373,551

7,694,298

ZL200580042442.1

4579298

10-0914077

7,281,127

7,752,428

7,660,913

7,409,575

8,862,785

9,891,929

8,286,169

7,451,301

7,581,037

7,293,184

7,278,006

ZL200580044889.2

602005040792.8

1839140

4802197

5167387

10-0907722

1839140

7,434,102

7,673,128

7,412,619

7,543,179

ZL200780009846.X

112007000688

I333144

7,617,400

7,398,382

602006049588.9

1856886

ZL200680005313.X

7,542,467

8,024,477

7,716,464

7,352,621

8,806,224

7,493,460

ZL200680032817.0

602006006846.8

1922617

7,373,537

7,441,112

8,046,576

8,862,862

9,465,623

7,543,287

ZL200680018961.9

4796625

10-0937062

7,734,934

7,580,701

8,032,117

7,870,373

7,774,846

7,516,336

8,195,968

8,595,526

9,158,362

7,478,196

8,327,192

7,647,474

ZL200680035585.4

602006024610.2

1934746

502011902004677

1934746

8,656,487

ZL200680035170.7

7,640,553

7,523,323

8,407,489

8,631,259

ZL200680033757.4

ZL201110308278.1

602006003912.3

1924909

1166389

7,480,791

ZL200680033756.X

7,793,127

7,584,374

7,634,629

ZL200680042498.1

I336039

7,631,206

7,461,299

7,725,747

7,555,641

7,660,977

ZL200710126426.1

10-1048914

7,930,728

7,370,175

7,716,421

I341464

ZL200780020629.0

7,889,685

7,840,398

8,368,711

8,786,622

9,448,828

7,818,558

8,082,431

ZL200710192949.6

5001773

7,886,190

7,685,376

7,721,080

7,406,560

8,266,238

7,765,440

8,510,859

ZL200710153796.4

9,235,707

602007038961.5

1906333

4775744

10-0989977

8,302,082

7,900,058

7,668,945

8,312,509

ZL200710170164.9

602007033774.7

1918815

4793733

5512610

10-0938305

1918815

2906661

2442348

10-0966398

1034453

7,594,077

7,987,458

7,941,624

9,384,039

7,673,126

7,788,475

7,945,841

7,779,244

7,822,960

7,596,714

7,689,817

7,627,718

ZL200710300216.X

8,688,965

ZL200810087275.8

7,987,348

ZL200810100361.8

ZL200810144638.7

8,984,265

ZL201410090626.6

602008052166.4

1975836

9,158,920

ZL200810127383.3

2017765

602008057777.5

2017765

7,747,846

7,761,701

8,452,950

7,890,811

7,882,341

7,818,560

8,645,965

10,585,702

ZL200810190343.3

7,900,033

7,987,349

9,047,491

7,827,371

8,458,726

7,793,090

7,873,846

8,402,262

8,185,886

8,391,913

8,649,818

7,831,858

7,900,084

8,583,908

7,962,738

ZL200810183979.5

5376928

8,839,356

ZL200810182279.4

2065800

602008054660.8

2065800

4896946

5410500

7,917,689

8,522,236

7,802,042

8,001,308

8,214,573

8,327,415

8,539,200

7,779,305

8,516,092

8,635,664

8,103,908

8,549,356

8,499,202

9,047,468

8,161,299

8,527,787

ZL200810188957.8

ZL201210028149.1

5636559

7,984,286

8,127,312

8,321,931

8,078,862

8,356,168

8,255,721

7,865,775

8,561,138

2207122

5350528

10-1208257

8,201,239

8,909,940

8,631,186

8,990,486

602009034009.3

2141625

ZL200810188988.3

2479666

10-1134816

8,910,169

ZL200910246861.7

2169514

602009056487.0

2169514

5532271

10-1114648

8,694,761

8,296,553

ZL200911000115.6

2189901

602009058867.2

2189901

5368947

8,296,528

8,086,839

7,953,916

8,463,972

8,832,454

ZL200910217300.4

2204755

2461264

2204755

2461264

2204755

5198422

10-1410078

10-1556818

8,151,027

602010032793.0

2239662

5497923

8,219,851

8,806,231

ZL201010621015.1

9,489,029

602010004816.0

2367091

5026579

10-1245442

2367091

9,015,268

ZL201110120401.7

5370897

10-1264521

ZL201180047970.1

8,539,245

2011285762

ZL201180048112.9

2601588

5705983

10-1518207

I467383

9,063,836

2011286271

ZL201180036850.1

2598997

5512892

10-1473119

I537967

8,522,066

9,098,300

ZL201110188572.3

5307196

10-1306395

8,312,258

ZL201180045466.8

602011036292.5

2596423

5540155

10-1407835

2596423

I482084

8,429,387

9,015,455

ZL201280037871.X

2729896

602012060184.1

2729896

5767751

10-1626397

9,367,327

I542992

8,370,667

ZL201180062019.3

5705996

10-1524961

I497289

8,499,141

ZL201180047390.2

602011021494.2

2601587

5607250

10-1370176

I521441

8,566,613

ZL201110153786.7

2395449

5301609

10-1312832

2510952

176870

8,479,017

2011271088

ZL201110165535.0

2397959

5394441

10-1276409

8,181,176

ZL201110179065.3

602011024271.7

2397943

5345652

10-1331311

8,739,177

ZL201110165550.5

602011002306.3

2398199

5275407

10-1444984

2398199

8,428,929

8,965,749

ZL201180046973.3

602011021514.0

2622533

5715256

5860504

10-1453266

I530872

8,977,871

ZL201080070815.7

ZL201610451692.0

5701399

10-1510028

8,607,040

2011329330

ZL201180055215.8

2641168

5606633

10-1512252

I524205

8,688,812

2011305211

ZL201180002816.2

5497190

10-1366913

I454924

8,386,618

ZL201180045848.0

2619679

602011059899.6

2619679

5657799

10-1465923

I482091

8,590,040

I499977

I564801

ZL201180075088.8

2761468

I468938

ZL201180075454.X

9,958,926

ZL201180074963.0

I512492

9,298,607

ZL201180075333.5

I566966

9,900,448

ZL201180076030.5

10-1646425

ZL201180076131.2

2798562

I476630

I515602

I599908

9,210,148

9,686,281

ZL201180049417.1

2798559

10-1359841

8,892,858

ZL201180075848.5

2795989

5890037

I477169

9,686,364

ZL201280071805.4

2831792

602012073987.8

2831792

10-1643072

9,251,347

ZL201280072136.2

2831788

5951879

10-1701014

9,507,937

9,262,178

2013215466

ZL201380007287.4

5893173

10-1609385

9,292,463

10,002,002

ZL201280075426.2

8,832,494

9,075,751

ZL201380004524.1

10-1618535

ZL201280075397.X

9,141,802

9,589,138

6096301

10-1775800

9,824,226

10,762,216

9,098,282

9,460,483

6105077

I502541

5,940,587

69838343.5

1038227

73695

ZL201380072535.3

6017706

10-1733903

9,311,177

602013022122.7

2959417

9,323,541

10,205,750

ZL201480008747.X

2973147

602014043689.7

2973147

ZL201380081151.8

10-1891420

9,832,172

ZL201380073058.2

2973139

6050528

10-1759411

9,223,983

9,563,775

2974123

602013061098.3

2974123

9,378,371

9,600,671

ZL201380079814.2

9,495,177

9,880,859

ZL201510093595.4

9,384,352

9,524,219

ZL201380079912.6

9,411,601

9,912,474

ZL201380080001.5

3063620

6272991

10-1861724

9,996,142

ZL201380077715.0

9,286,097

10-1915695

10,310,865

11,068,276

9,626,196

10,228,954

ZL201580009451.4

6316978

10-1891423

ZL201480076013.5

3120238

6466476

10-1920980

10,289,425

10,684,865

9,413,765

9,781,117

ZL201580010585.8

3123337

10-1823888

I556130

10,146,657

ZL201580010934.6

6297715

10-1931007

10,049,216

ZL201580003846.3

10,025,934

10-1802800

I601070

9,645,864

11,182,172

ZL201580003799.2

6152493

10-1826769

10-2219122

9,773,110

10,140,449

9,594,927

10,366,237

ZL201580042636.5

I546699

9,785,801

10,831,934

ZL201580028293.7

10-2244645

I570589

9,703,346

3158452

ZL201480079261.5

3161710

6481900

10-1881788

9,870,475

ZL201480079192.8

3161657

6396502

10-1896373

10,169,047

9,740,492

10,331,453

ZL201680011606.2

3274895

602016058368.2

3274895

9,589,155

ZL201580044960.0

I582637

ZL201580061649.7

3231129

10,389,788

9,817,673

10,592,254

10,185,547

ZL201680030406.1

9,525,675

ZL201580076833.9

10,372,491

9,626,227

10,067,805

ZL201680012778.1

3274827

6689873

10,430,589

ZL201680011476.2

10,496,974

ZL201680009786.0

10,747,884

9,836,307

ZL201680030403.8

3314416

9,612,887

10,445,154

6768710

ZL201580080108.9

10,664,573

10,223,187

9,858,412

ZL201680030338.9

3314444

ZL201580082636.8

9,691,278

9,998,284

10,218,508

9,769,169

10,069,826

10,432,627

9,798,641

ZL201611053849.0

6363153

10,061,424

9,977,682

10,776,524

10,496,388

10,158,671

10,776,283

10,635,607

10,581,815

10,592,670

Issuing bodies/countries beyond US above include Europe, WIPO, Japan, South Korea, China, Malaysia, Germany, India, Taiwan, Netherlands, Ireland, Poland, United Kingdom, Mexico, France, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Italy, Australia, Brazil, ...

And another rub in my accounting is that some patents are done w/ McAfee, although the # is small.

Since my global patent isssued # is now greater than 1000, maybe I'll avoid doing this analysis again since I doubt I'll ever bump into another big milestone like 1500 or 2000.

And for Mike's 1000 issued, given I am > 150 ahead of him on US grants and he only has a handful of non-joint filings, I suspect he's not at 1000 global issue yet, especially since I have barely tipped that #. But I don't think I have the energy to dig into Mike's actual #. Maybe Mike's wikipedia fanbois can do that recon. Given this twisted path of analysis, thus the blog title https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics.

fin (97)

PS (4/24/2024) - my total # is now 1081 issued patents worldwide w/ Intel