IT Heroes Episode XII: Dave Probert Windows Kernel Architect

Dave Probert Windows Kernel Achitect

Until recently Dave managed kernel development for Windows, including Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, and early phases of XPSP2 and Vista.  Dave is currently working on a project to release kernel sources to universities and developing ProjectOZ, an experimental environment based on the SPACE project at UC Santa Barbara, where Dave earned his PhD in Electrical & Computer Engineering.

Dave is a co-author/consultant of a Chinese textbook on operating system principles illustrated with Windows, and for the last several years has taught a short course with Prof. Kei Hiraki at University of Tokyo on Windows Internals, and spoken widely at universities on the architecture of the Windows kernel.   Prior to Microsoft, Dave's experience was primarily focused on UNIX kernels, including several years as Vice President of Software Engineering at Culler Scientific Systems.  Dave's career began in the late 1970s at Burroughs, where he was a computer architect designing hardware and writing microcode for the B1900.

In this interview we discuss the history of modern operating systems and how we got to where we are today. Dave also passionately evangelizes Windows Curriculum Resource Kit project that releases over 500,000 lines of source code of the NTOS Kernel (Windows 2003 Kernel) to Academia for education and research, which is currently available for download from the Windows Academic Alliance website.

IT Heroes: Stories from the Trenches; these are the real stories of men and women in IT making a difference everyday. We talk with authors, innovators and implementers about emerging technologies, troubleshooting and remediation of common infrastructure issues and charitable contributions in the community.  We seek to educate and provide a forum for open discussion of the many uses for and specific ways in which people are everyday exploiting technology to create opportunities for themselves and others.

Stream the Dave Probert interview now!

Originally posted Friday, February 03, 2006 1:57 AM by MJMurphy_TechNet at http://blogs.technet.com/mjmurphy [6]