James Reinders is Director of Marketing and Sales for Intel's Software Development Products and serves as their Chief Evangelist and Spokesperson.
James joined Intel Corporation in 1989 and has contributed to projects including the world's first TeraFLOP supercomputer (ASCI Red), compilers and architecture work for a number of Intel processors and parallel systems including the iWarp, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Itanium, and Pentium 4 processors. He has years of experience in processor architecture, optimizing compilers, parallel computer architecture, and making products for software developers in segments spanning from embedded to HPC. James is heavily involved in corporate strategy and tactical plans supporting software developers' move to multi-core processors.
Reinders is the author of a new book "Intel Threading Building Blocks"
from O'Reilly Media, monthly columnist for the The Gauntlet, the author of the book VTune
Performance Analyzer Essentials from Intel Press, and contributor to the Intel Press book Multi-Core Programming.
In his current role, James is responsible for world-wide sales, marketing, communications, manufacturing, distribution, product validation, technical marketing and support, and product evangelization for Intel's software products. As spokesperson and evangelist, James frequently speaks at conferences, user groups, and with press and analysts.
My favorite toy growing up:
Model railroad, especially building electronic controls for it
The engineer or technologist who inspired me most:
My father (a mechanical engineer)
The contribution for which I most want to be remembered:
Helping someone else go further in their life because of a little encouragement I might have given along the way
What I value in a technical collaborator:
An infectious commitment to continuous improvement and teamwork
What I wish I had invented:
microprocessor
How I define beauty in engineering:
The appearance of simplicity and consistency, regardless of the profound inventions and technology underneath
My favorite quotation:
"You miss 100% of the shots you never take." - Wayne Gretzky (Professional Hockey Player, 1961-)
My favorite book or movie:
Casablanca (1942)
My favorite fictional hero or heroine:
Huckleberry Finn
My favorite hobby, sport, or pastime:
Being outdoors, especially backpacking
A talent I wish I had:
Anything musical, I see the joy my children have because my wife had this talent to encourage in them
Something few people know about me:
I'm an avid coin collector, I love the history
Something that makes me laugh:
Puns, I enjoy puns
My favorite source of technology news:
Talking with the people involved
What I appreciate most in a computer system:
Fitting to the user, not the other way around
My first experience with parallel computing:
College parallel algorithms course designed for a Hypercube which didn't arrive all term (it was late)
The most important problem to solve for multicore software:
Productive programming models (lots of them)
My worst fear about how multicore technology might evolve:
Software standardization (official or de facto) efforts will precede practice and experience
What computer-science students should learn that their professors don't teach them:
You are starting with parallel computers as the norm, parallelism is here to stay, embrace it, live and breathe it - it should be intuitive, and is your starting point as computer professionals.
My dream about the future of computing:
Star Trek computers will seem limited and crude by comparison
A question I wish had been on the list, and my answer:
In a word, what is the future of computing? Embedded and ubiquitous