Last fall we announced the launch of the VITA Technologies Hall of Fame. John Rynearson, the current technical director of VITA, was the first inductee into the Hall of Fame. With this issue, we are announcing additional inductees. We are also releasing the process for nominating and selecting future inductees.
New inductees: Cecil Kaplinksy; Craig MacKenna; John Black; Shlomo Pri-Tal; Wayne Fischer.
Our first three inductees – Cecil Kaplinsky, Craig MacKenna, and John Black developed the first draft of the VMEbus specification. Unfortunately we have lost touch with two of these VMEbus pioneers. Cecil, who was at Signetics at the time of the launch of VMEbus, went on to a career of IP development but it appears that he passed away in 1999. Craig was the designer of Mostek’s first VME processor board but has not been heard from in recent years.
John authored the VMEbus specification, which was eventually adopted as an IEEE, ANSI, and ISO standard. In 1985 John left Motorola to found his own company (Micrology pbt, Inc) to work with start-up companies seeking to offer leading-edge embedded multiprocessing computer systems based on the VMEbus standard. At the same time he and two partners launched a technical publishing company (OpenSystems Publishing, now called OpenSystems Media) to promote the development of open standards, and to assist start-up companies in introducing products based on those standards. In addition to his partner responsibilities, John served as editor-in-chief of VMEbus Systems (now VITA Technologies) magazine and Real-time Engineering magazine.
In 2003 John joined Arizona State University as a Research Scientist to help launch the Center for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing and the iCARE project, which conducts research aimed at the development of assistive technologies for people who are blind.
Shlomo Pri-Tal joined Motorola in 1980, and was an originator of the VMEbus architecture. In 1984 Shlomo assumed the chair of the VME Subsystem Bus (VSB) 1096 committee. One year later, he would do the same with the IEEE 1014 VMEbus working group. Shlomo was elected chairman of the VITA Technical Committee in 1987.
Shlomo has remained connected to the original Motorola team in one form or another. He is now the CTO of Artesyn Embedded Technologies, which is the latest incarnation of Motorola, Force Computers, and several other embedded technology companies that have merged together over the years.
Wayne Fischer was working as Motorola’s 68000 microprocessor expert for Silicon Valley in 1981 and became involved with the VME strategy as part of Motorola’s plans for expanding the new CPU’s market. As Fischer recalls, “VME was a means to an end, not an end unto itself.”
Wayne went to Force Computers in 1983. He headed the IEEE working group for the U.S. VMEbus standard, IEEE 1014, gaining final approval in 1987. He fully retired in January of 2000 and moved to Lake Tahoe to enjoy the beauty of the area, remaining active in the local community.
More on each of these inductees can be found at the Hall of Fame website: http://opensystemsmedia.com/hall-of-fame/vita-technologies
Nomination and selection process
We have developed a simple nomination and selection process that is loosely based on the NFL Hall of Fame process.
Any “fan” may nominate any qualified individual, team of individuals, company, product, or technology to the VITA Technologies Hall of Fame via the nomination form on the Hall of Fame website. The only restriction is that the nominee must have had a significant impact on the critical and intelligent embedded computing industry.
The nominees will be gathered into a ballot at the end of November each year. The ballot will be distributed to the current members of VITA, who will make up the Selection Committee, for online voting. Each member company will have one ballot to select their top choices.
To be elected, a finalist must receive at least 80 percent support from the ballot, with at least five, but no more than 10, candidates being elected annually. If less than five candidates get 80 percent of the vote, then the top five vote-getters will be inducted that year. If more than 10 get 80 percent, then only the top 10 vote-getters will be inducted. There is no set number for any class (people, products, companies, etc) of inductees.
To assure that older nominees will be considered along with the younger breed, the Seniors Committee, made up of the current VITA Board of Directors, will ensure that at least five candidates active pre-1995 are included on the ballot.
This is a great way for the industry to show our appreciation for the contributions made to make this industry such a success. Be sure to submit your nominations.