Alexei A. Predtechenski
(even in Texas you have to wear a jacket during severe winter time, sometimes :-)
Alexei A. Predtechenski is a Principal Validation Engineer at Standard Microsystems Corporation, Austin Design Center. Prior to joining SMSC in 2000, he worked at Advanced Micro Devices for about 5 years dealing with platform performance analysis and systems stability issues for K5, K6, and K7 (Athlon) processors. He graduated with major in Physics from the Novosibirsk State University in Siberia, Russia, and received a Ph. D in Physics and Mathematics from the Institute of Thermal Physics in 1978. Later at the Institute of Automation, he helped to pioneer applications of the modern mathematical concept of “strange attractors” to the problem of turbulence (see rare citations in here). Since 1991, Dr. A. Predtechenski(y) worked as a Research Fellow at the Center for Nonlinear Dynamics at the University of Texas at Austin, where he co-authored several scientific papers on experimental projects in nonlinear physics, in addition to his 30-something prior publications. In process of these jobs, the top-performing computer equipment was frequently the key to obtaining world-class results, so he had to master some skills in performance evaluation and benchmarking, which currently remains as his hobby. Also, he had to develop some hardware to operate with computers, starting with a CAMAC controller for a X-Y plotter, an ADC module with DMA for Q-bus, a PID controller for a precise rotary setup, and up to a DSP electronics for an infrared spectrophotometer for space research, and a front-end signal conditioning array for a sonar. His computer experience ranges from the bizarre one-char-wide computer MIR-1, the former flagman of USSR computers BESM-6, clones of Sytem360 and 370, PDP-11/20 and 45, to x86 PCs. In the course of these exercises he had to speak an Alpha-language, Algol-60, FORTRAN, of course C, more recently in Verilog and even in Visual BASIC. His e-mail address is apredtechenski@austin.rr.com .