Tim Mann's Home Page



This is my personal home page. It's mostly for fun stuff. You can find additional information about me in my curriculum vitae.

To reach me, send email to <tim
at tim hyphen mann period org>. If you'd like to send me anything encrypted, I am timothypmann on keybase. I don't recommend using my old DSA-1024 PGP key anymore.

Work

Since September 4, 2001, I've been an engineer at VMware in Palo Alto, California. My current title is Senior Staff Engineer. I'm formally attached to the ESX Server project, in the VMkernel group, but my work has extended through both ESX and the hosted products such as Workstation, and through several layers of the system. I've worked extensively on time-related issues, including a redesign of the virtual timer devices that guest operating systems see when running in a virtual machine, and a redesign of the physical timer service in the ESX VMkernel. I've also worked on extensions to the VMkernel to run user-mode applications, on the VMkernel buffer cache, and on power management. Currently I'm in the VMkernel hardware group, working on parts of the kernel that are closest to the hardware.

Before that, I spent over 14 years as a computer scientist at the Systems Research Center in Palo Alto, California (initially part of Digital Equipment Corporation, later part of Compaq). My main projects over the years included Vesta, a software configuration management system that has been released as free software under the LGPL, persistent filesystem support for the handheld computer Itsy, the distributed filesystem Frangipani, and the replicated filesystem Echo. I've also dabbled in clock synchronization.

My PhD work at Stanford was on naming in distributed operating systems, with David Cheriton as my advisor. Along the way I got to hack on most parts of the V operating system as well as learning lots of other things.

Bibliography

The most up-to-date bibliography for me is the one in my curriculum vitae.

Chess

See my chess pages for information on XBoard, WinBoard, GNU Chess, Internet Chess Servers, Zippy and more.

Retrocomputing

In a previous life I was an operating system programmer for the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I and Model III. More recently, in a fit of nostalgia, I've gotten interested in TRS-80 Model I/III/4 emulators. I've made some major extensions to xtrs, an emulator that runs under Unix with the X Window System. I've also gotten back in touch with some old colleagues, and have gained permission from Roy Soltoff of Misosys to put his TRS-80 software up for downloading. See my TRS-80 pages for information and software.

Music

I've moved my various musical endeavors to their own small page. The images and sound files of me singing and playing my guitar are probably of interest only to my friends.

Photos

Many people seem to start out their web sites as a place for personal photos. Now that my site has been around for several years as a home for my free software, I've put up some photos too. Like my music, they're probably of interest only to my family and friends.

Christmas letters

Here's another addition for my family and friends: an archive of all my annual Christmas letters. They run from 1987 to the present. I enjoyed looking back over them, but I won't be hurt if no one else wants to!

Genealogy

I'm descended from six families who came to America in the mid-1800's from various parts of Germany. You can see the family tree that I've put together at RootsWeb or Ancestry.com. It includes thousands of my blood relatives from both America and Germany, together with spouses and occasional in-laws. Please contact me if you're related to me or someone in my tree and are interested in sharing more information! Also check out the old family pictures in my photo gallery.

 Faith

I'm an active Christian, a member of Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Belmont, California, a WELS congregation. Some of my church activities include serving as treasurer, singing in the choir, and serving as music leader at our summer Bible camp in the Sierra foothills.


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