Ian McDonnell

Freelance Consulting Software Engineer

Objectives

System-on-a-Chip (SoC) based systems development. Focusing on networking and communications related products and applications, real-time and embedded systems, data acquisition and control systems.

Embedded Linux systems platform design and development, device drivers and applications; ARM-Linux being a favorite.

Firmware development for SoC and 32-bit microcontroller devices, bootstrap and specialized I/O functions.

Summary

A well-rounded pragmatic engineer with broad experience in systems development from Supercomputers to 8-bit micros. Deep knowledge of Unix systems, networking and Internet protocols. Excellent understanding of operating system principles, time-share and real-time.

Interacts and communicates very well with team members; is cooperative and friendly; provides leadership and mentoring. Has broad understanding of computing systems, communications and systems architecture; electrical engineering. Works well alongside hardware engineers and other disciplines.

Strong system analysis, problem-solving and debugging skills; sees the big-picture and the critical detail. Has excellent written and verbal communication abilities and is well-versed in software development processes, tools and techniques, product development. Takes pride in creating high-quality creative and practical solutions.

Skills

Networking and Communications: Internet client/server and systems; LAN and WAN network protocols, access and connectivity devices; protocol gateways, routers, switches and inter-working devices; network appliance, test and diagnostic equipment; network security. Real-time, high-performance and multi-threaded data processing.

Systems Engineering and Architecture: processor, memory, buses, peripheral, choices and trade-offs. Device drivers: PCI configuration, bridges and devices (Ethernet, SCSI, co-processor, Fibre Channel, PLX-Bridge, etc.). FPGA and CPLD interfaces; I2C controller/devices; SPI controller/devices; USB Device/Host/Class; MMC/SD controllers; NAND/NOR/Managed Flash memory; Wireless-LAN 802.11 devices; Controller-Area-Network (CAN) controllers. SoC and microcontroller: bootstrap, clocking/PLLs, SDRAM configuration, pinning, GPIO, power management, memory management, embedded peripheral and controller drivers.

Embedded Linux know-how: system architecture; bare-metal boot; RAM and Flash-based filesystems; kernel; run-time support libraries, Glibc and uClibc; Busybox utilities, system start-up and persistent configuration; applications and drivers, protocols; fast boot techniques; system update and recovery techniques; customization, MTD, lots more. Development system tools and methods, SCM, OSS and FLOSS development.

Microcontroller firmware development: simple RTOS and eCos applications, bootstrap and I/O controller firmware. Developed free standing code providing bare-metal processor/system start-up and direct OS load from current memory/media technologies including Dataflash, NAND, eMMC/SD/SDHC devices.

Platforms: UNIX (application and kernel), SVR4, BSD, Linux, Solaris, eCos, POSIX, POSIX-RT and X/Open system interfaces; inter-process communication services: streams, sockets, TLI, NLI, multi-threading, RTLinux, SMP, shared memory, filesystems, semaphores etc.

Programming: C, C++, shell, perl, expect, Tcl/tk, lex, yacc, etc.; various assembler ARM, PowerPC, IA32/X86.

Tools: JTAG programmers, debuggers, ARM DCC; EmbeddedICE, Abatron BDI2000; Sniffers; Logic Analyzers, Scopes.

Development Environment: UNIX, X-Window System, VNC, KDE, Makefiles, GNU tools and cross compilers, Binutils ld-scripts, GDB.

Code-management: RCS, CVS, Clearcase, Subversion, Git.
Methods: UML, ROSE, Octopus, Gilb/Fagan Inspection.

Contact Information

Web: http://www.aprioriamerica.com
e-mail: projects5 @ aprioriamerica.com
Phone: +1-781-354-5878

Experience

A Priori America, Inc. Winchester MA
Business Owner and Freelance Consulting Software and Systems Engineer, 1994-date

Clients and Project Highlights

Continental Electronics Corporation, Dallas TX
World-Class Radio Transmitter Equipment Manufacturer

Hybrid Digital (HD) Radio Transmitter Product Development (2008-present)

• System comprised of OTS SBC X86 processor and a collection of Continental Electronics-designed DSP and Digital RF boards connected via PCI, USB and proprietary LVDS interfaces. Participated in early hardware design review, FPGA interface design. Produced system software architecture design.
• Developed complete X86 embedded Linux system from boot to applications from Compact Flash, including RAM based filesystem, start-up scripts, etc.
• Designed and coded driver for PCI PLX9030 attached Altera FGPA on up-converter board; drivers for two TI DSP TMS320C6415 boards, shared-memory IPC (PCI) design and coding both X86 host and TI DSP; drivers for two peripheral controllers attached via USB (USB class drivers); code API interfaces for drivers.
• Designed and coded multi-threaded HD-Radio protocol interface engine application moving data from network to DSP requiring hard real-time scheduling and low jitter.
• Designed upper level control software for configuration and control. Coded many utilities for embedded Flash chip programming, FPGA configuration, subsystem debug, diagnostics and statistics, etc. Participated in extensive system test and integration.
• All work, save a few on-site visits, performed from Winchester MA office and involved colaboration with other remote CS/EE consultants.

Bright Star Engineering, Wilmington MA
Manufacturer of SoC-based SBCs and Automotive Diagnostic Tools

Product Development (2004-present)

• Designed and developed several generations of automotive diagnostic tool products; many thousands of which are in use every day around the world.
• Responsibilities include platform and driver development for PowerPC and ARM based GNU/Linux SBC designs, including all aspects from hardware design reviews, prototype bring-up and bootstrap to multi-threaded application-specific real-time protocol implementation. Microcontroller firmware development and interface design.
• Processors include: ARM, PowerPC and MIPS. SoC chips: Atmel/ARM AT91SAM9200, AT91SAM9G20, AT91SAM9G45; NXP/ARM LPC2194; Motorola/FreeScale PowerPC MPC5200 (PPC603e); Sharp/ARM LH79524; Alchemy/MIPS AU1100, Atmel AVR. Bare-metal bootstapping: CPU, clock/PLL, SDRAM/DDR, MMU setup, with high-speed OS and Filesystem load directly from NOR, NAND and eMMC/SD/SDHC cards and chips.
• Extensive Linux kernel work, drivers, memory devices, embedded peripheral I/O and control, RTLinux and dual OS drivers. Developed creative software solutions for various hardware design restrictions, SoC pinning constraints and device errata.
• Driver, API and application development supporting a wide-range of components and subsystems including: fast Flash-based boot mechanisms, MTD work with NOR/NAND and Dataflash/EEPROM, Controller-Area-Network (CAN) controllers, I2C controllers and devices, Wireless LAN, analog-to-digital ADC, serial comms UART, SPI and I2C controllers and devices, GPIO, Timers/counters, SD/MMC card storage, watchdog, Ethernet MAC and PHY MII, USB host and USB devices, handheld LCD displays and keypads, attached microcontrollers, real-time vehicle diagnostic protocols and electrical interfaces.
• Wireless LAN driver ports: Conexant PCI to MPC5200 PPC and Marvell SDIO (Wi2Wi) to AT91SAM ARM controller. Flash filesystem ports; development of YAFFS. Developed fast-boot mechanisms, product recovery mechanisms and booting of system images from a running system (pre-dates KEXEC). Das U-Boot customization for boards and functional requirements.
• eCos C++ based ARM microcontroller firmware development for several Controller-Area-Network (CAN) Bus interface designs -- NXP (Philips) LPC2000 series.

Wireless Techniques/Tufts University, Medford MA

Research Laboratory Equipment Development (2009)

• Put together an ARM-Linux GNU, Busybox platform running on Atmel AT91RM9200 on an SSV DNP/9200 card and provided tools, build environment and application samples. Developed two drivers for communications and GPIO polling/interrupts etc.

Seranoa Networks Inc. (Start-up), Boxborough MA

Network Edge Switches Product Development (2002-2003)

• Embedded Linux on both PowerPC and StrongARM architectures: Motorola MPC8260 PowerQUICC-II, Intel IXP1200/StrongARM network processor. Contributed to Switching product hardware and software design reviews.
• Hardware bring-up and trouble shooting of IXP1200 processor, Flash-ROM, SRAM, SDRAM, i82559 and 8260 FEC Ethernet chips. Designed and coded IXP1200/StrongARM network processor initialization, memory configuration, I/O and PCI configuration.
• Merged code from three Linux kernel versions (2.5, 2.4, 2.3) to produce an operational big-endian IXP1200 StrongARM kernel for Intel's IXP12EB and Seranoa's WANport boards. Built, integrated and trimmed system shared libraries for small footprint embedded use including Busybox. Added Ethernet jumbo frames support.
• Developed ARM-Linux drivers for IXP1200, interfaced microcode-based data-plane with Linux protocol stack. Developed switch and forwarding information base driver. Coded IXF1002 dual Gigabit Ethernet driver interface to microcode and PHY.
• Protocol development: Integrated MPLS 0.9 for Linux with 2.4 and 2.3 kernels and fixed numerous bugs and issues. Created new socket protocol type and API for MPLS applications. Designed and coded a custom ARP resolver daemon providing next-hop address tracking for Gigabit Ethernet channels and IXP1200 microcode forwarding engines. Designed and implemented custom inter-processor bridging and tunneling kernel modules for Ethernet, Frame Relay and MPLS traffic. Coded kernel module to forward ISIS protocol PDUs between WAN and LAN ports. Extended Linux Ethernet LLC to support jumbo frame encapsulation. Coded SunRPC based inter-process and co-processor control services including modified SunRPC libraries for tight control of timeouts, retransmission and reply caching.

Zetari Inc. (Start-up), Waltham MA

Integrated Server/NAS/Switch Development (2000-2001)

• System architecture, design and development of a high-density integrated server, NAS and switch system.
• Member of a core team defining overall system design and architecture, including: processors, connectivity, peripherals etc. Contributed to the selection of operating systems, hardware/software trade-offs, peripheral silicon and driver selection for both StrongARM and IA32 X86 processor elements; Ethernet, SCSI and Fibre Channel peripherals. Ported NetBSD/arm32 to proprietary StrongARM-based control processor, including: hardware bring-up, SA-110 Footbridge 21285 programming, Flash-based board and PCI device initialization and bootstrap coding.
• Modified and supported NetBSD/arm32 as a platform for system control and network management components: PCI drivers, VM configuration, I/O mapping, bootstrap, added support for 82371 ISA/IDE/USB and PCI-based IPC to attached co-processor.
• Developed abstract, object-oriented, UML models for network attached storage (NAS) subsystem. Produced designs mapping existing NAS technology to an abstract model with simplified use and management cases. Supported hardware bring-up of NAS subsystem including: BIOS selection, BIOS vendor relations/specification, NFSv3, PCI-bus/device configuration, Fibre Channel, SCSI, RAID, and Ethernet device firmware Flash and EEPROM programming (MicroWire programming utility development).

Nokia, Burlington MA
Telecommunications Equipment Manufacturers

Internet-Access Equipment Development (1998-2000)

• FreeBSD-based and ChorusOS operating systems and proprietary networking code; PowerPC 603e and ATM based rack system hardware.
• Principal designer/developer of L2TP Access Concentrator (LAC) subsystem development, including PPPoE (RFC2516) and PPP encapsulation, session management, L2TP tunneling and zero-copy packet switching. ATM and Fast Ethernet data-links.
• Implemented queuing layer for the Internet differentiated services (RFC2475) expedited forwarding quality of service (QoS) - including ATM, T1/E1 and Ethernet drivers and extended APIs to support multiple output queues.
• ATM device driver performance analysis and subsequent optimization - re-design and coding of I/O path for Rockwell/Conexant Bt8233 ATM SAR device. Achieved line-speed packet (cell) rates with small-sized packets.
• Internet Protocol fast-path forwarding coding. Integrated and optimized forwarding interface with underlying ATM datalink and routing base. Enhanced ChorusOS networking modules to support Internet CIDR routing scheme.
• Routing daemon port and FIB integration adding RIP, OSPF, BGP, to distributed router. Designed and implemented route distribution components. Integrated routing information base with distributed forwarding engine and information base.
• Provided mentoring and guidance to engineers working with IP, data communications, operating system and network management components.

BBN Planet (Genuity), Cambridge MA
Internet Service Provider

Firewall Management Software Development (1997)

• Technical lead for a large-scale firewall monitoring system over Internet wide-area communications, Kerberos authentication/encryption and proprietary firewall management components (C, C++, Perl, Kerberos, SOCKS4, TCP/IP, UNIX, Solaris, BSDi).

Giesecke & Devrient Engineering, formerly Ektron/Kodak, Bedford MA
Manufactures of Printing Inspection Systems

Currency Inspection Systems Development (1995/6)

• Conducted performance and benchmark measurements and analysis to locate and measure areas critical to data acquisition and image processing performance (C, RPC, NFS, X11, UNIX, Solaris, SunOS).
• Consulted on various aspects of distributed processing including: inter-process communication, real-time RPC synchronization, threading, real-time X11 window client communications and developed control programs for a multi-computer currency print inspection system, running on SunOS, Solaris, pSOS and proprietary systems. (C, RPC, NFS, X11, UNIX, Solaris, SunOS).

A Priori Technica, Ltd. UK
Business Owner and Freelance Consulting Software Engineer, 1992-1994

Clients and Project Highlights

House of Fraser, Information Systems, Swindon UK
UK Department Store Retailer

• Consulted on TCP/IP X.25 migration, Internet and ISO LLC protocols, bridging and encapsulation, network architecture and design.

Retail Logic Ltd., Camberley UK
POS and Credit Card Processing Software Developers

• Designer and principal developer of ASPEN remote EPOS terminal polling system for the automatic retrieval and distribution of EPOS data files. Created for a large UK Supermarket and to poll hundreds of sites nightly. Running on AIX/RS6000 UNIX-based platform.

Bull Information Systems, Hemel Hempsted UK
International Computer Systems Manufacturer

• Designed and developed network and device communications subsystems running on SUN Solaris for back-office POS data and information processing system using TCP and LAN Link-Layer-Control protocols LLC1, LLC2.

Employers

Cray Research Inc., Bracknell UK
Manufacturers of Supercomputer Systems

Senior Software Engineer, Networking Group, 1989-1992

• Designed and developed a new generation of file transfer services (FTA) for Cray supercomputers and networked workstation systems running UNIX. Supporting Internet FTP, ISO FTAM and additional proprietary protocols.
• Originated ideas and designs for network authentication and authorization schemes for secure network file access and transfer.
• Led the development of a distributed (client/server) user interface for the Cray supercomputer NQS batch system. Implemented portable NQS protocol modules for use in Cray's networked queuing environment (NQE).
• Presented technical seminars and product information to customers, user groups and corporate management.
• Liaised with customer analysts to identify and define user requirements. Practiced Gilb quality assurance and project management techniques for software development cycles.
• Participated in IEEE POSIX and International Standards Organization meetings. Speaker at Cray annual Technical Symposium in recognition of new technology contributions to the company.

Digital Equipment Corporation, Reading UK
Manufacturers of Mini-Computers.

Software Engineer, ULTRIX Engineering, 1987-1989

• Designed and coded a high-performance TCP/IP network driver supporting communications between Digital VAX and Cray supercomputers.
• Specified and developed the installation and verification tools for TCP/IP and DECnet networked products. Managed the testing and certification projects for an electronic mail gateway product. Coordinated product certification, field-test and product release activities.
• Represented Digital in the X/Open working group for the verification of systems.
• Trained customer service and product support personnel in product usage, theory of operation, and problem diagnosis.

Analogic Corporation, Peabody MA
Electronics Systems Manufacturer

Product and Applications Specialist, Computing Systems Division (UK), 1985-1987

• Designed and coded the microcode routines for the low-level control of an Array Processor.
• Produced and presented customer technical training courses.
• Developed array processor I/O channel driver and system software for real-time data acquisition and signal processing applications.
• Designed and developed VAX/VMS driver extensions and Fortran API for multi-channel data acquisition system.

Software Engineer, Computing Systems Division (Wakefield MA), 1983-1985

• Developed hardware diagnostics for an AMD bit-slice pipelined arithmetic processor with MC68000 CPU and I/O elements in a high-performance array processor system.
• Worked with hardware development and manufacturing teams to trouble-shoot system prototypes and manufacturing problems.
• Produced and presented customer training classes in hardware failure diagnosis and trouble-shooting.
• Ported software development tools, written in C, from VAX/VMS to an embedded MC68000 based system.
• Developed an HP-UX file server to support file access from an attached diskless processor.
• Designed and implemented a high-speed I/O port driver and application program library interface for a pipelined arithmetic processor.

Field Service Engineer, Service Dept. (UK) part-time intern 1979-1983

• Repaired data acquisition and industrial control and measurement systems.
• Built module and device test equipment.
• Produced demonstration software for product exhibitions (Fortran, Array Processor, RSX-11, PDP-11).

Education

Undergraduate Computer Science, Faculty of Natural Science, 1980-1983.
Special interest in operating systems and communications. 3rd year projects: Intel iAPX432 processor simulator and Rugby time server for Cambridge token-ring network and BSD 4.1 UNIX. Treasurer, engineer and presenter at the University radio station.