Ike Nassi's Home Page

Dr. Ike Nassi is a Computer Scientist. He is an IEEE Fellow (citation: "for leadership in parallel and distributed systems and adaptive systems"), a Fellow of the IEEE Computer Society, as well as a Senior Life Member. He is also a Life Member of the Association for Computing Machinery. He is named on over 40 patents (see below) with other patents in progress.

He has a long-held technology philosophy: “Machinery” (broadly based, including processors, operating systems, databases, caches, networks etc.) can dynamically adapt by looking at the results of its own behavior and then adjusting it's own future behavior to improve performance; and, it can do much faster than humans can (including programmers).

He was the founder, chairman and CTO of TidalScale, a software pioneer which developed a software architecture called distributed virtual machines. TidalScale's software, sitting below an operating system and above bare metal commodity hardware, aggregates commodity servers together to create a single virtual server to address challenging Big Data problems for in-memory SQL and NoSQL databases, large-scale analytics, simulation, and computational genomics. Because resources are virtual, they can migrate from node to node in the cluster and can be dynamically added and removed, allowing for hardware scalability, reliability, and resiliency. Instead of requiring application software to be customized for a specific computing environment, TidalScale's software allows a customer to tailor the computing environment to the needs of application software with no modification required. HPE acquired TidalScale's products and intellectual property in December 2022.

He is an Adjunct Professor at the Baskin School of Engineering, UC Santa Cruz since 2011. He's a member of four research labs: Languages Systems and Data, Storage and Systems Research Center (a.k.a. Center for Research in Systems and Software), the Disorderly Lab, and the Security Research Lab.

He is also a founding trustee of the Computer History Museum. He has served on its Executive Committee, its Nomination and Governance Committee, and has been the chair of the CHM Fellows Selection Committee for many years. The Computer History Museum published his oral history. A transcript is available.

In the past, he was an Executive Vice President and Chief Scientist at SAP AG. At SAP, he and his group explored advanced new enterprise technologies and applications for use in multinational corporate environments. He started SAP's Global Business Incubator, whose goal is to start up new businesses within SAP. He also started and operated the SAP Sponsored Academic Research Program, over five years supporting a hundred sponsored research projects in universities in several countries. His last individual research at SAP was designing and building "Enterprise Supercomputers" for Big Data applications.

While at SAP, in 2009-2010 he was in residence as a visiting scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), where he is currently holds a research affiliation.

He started one of the first mesh networking companies, Firetide. Earlier, he had been Vice President of Product Development and Operations and Chief Technology Officer at InfoGear Technology Corporation which was acquired by Cisco June 2000. InfoGear developed an internet-connected intelligent phone, called the iPhone in 1997 with built in web browsing and email.

Prior to joining InfoGear, he was a Senior Vice President and a Corporate Officer at Apple Computer , where he led its AppleSoft Division until November 1996. At Apple he was responsible for all system software, including MacOS. His three main contributions at Apple were the introduction of the Mach microkernel, which is now used in every iPhone, iPad, and Macintosh, and a study that led to an investment in Acorn RISC Machines, now ARM. ARM processors are now used in all iPhone, Macs, and iPads, as well as most other mobile devices. While at Apple he testified before the U.S. Congress on the Emerging Telecommunications Act of 1991, supporting the reservation of public access radio spectrum for wireless local area networks that we now think of as 802.11 WiFi.

Prior to working at Apple he helped start Encore Computer Corporation, a pioneer in the design and development of shared memory multiprocessors. Under a DARPA research contract, he and his team developed the idea and an implementation of hierarchically organized distributed cache coherent shared memory multiprocessors. Today these servers are in standard use.

Before that worked at Visual Technology, Digital Equipment Corporation where he worked on the VAX superminicomputer and SofTech Inc where he worked on software for the F-16 and the B-1 aircraft.

He has served the Federal government in several capacities. He holds a Certificate for Distinguished Service from the U.S. Department of Defense for his design work on the programming language Ada. He also served for six years as a member of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Information Systems and Technology group, advising DARPA on information science research priorities, for which he was awarded another Certificate for Distinguished Service.

Throughout his career, he has been involved simultaneously in industry and Academia. He has been a visiting scholar Stanford University, twice a research affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a visiting scholar in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley. Early in his career, he taught Computer Science at Boston University.

He was on the advisory board of the School of Software and Microelectronics, Peking University, the advisory board of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of Northwestern University and the Center for Wireless & Information Technology at Stony Brook University.

He is also on the board of Nemertes [NEXT], a think-tank.

He is also a founding member of the IEEE Computer Society's Industry Advisory Board.

Previously, he served on the Advisory board of Viewpoints Research (founded by Alan Kay) and he served as a member of two women's advocacy groups: he was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, and an advisor to Watermark.

Here is a list of his publications and speaking engagements.

During the pandemic, he wrote some software to manage Desktop Images (i.e. Wallpaper) on a Mac. It is written using Keyboard Maestro, and can be downloaded here. He also wrote software to facilitate fast filing of MacOS Mail messages into various mailbox with a few keystrokes. It can be downloaded here.

Secure.IO recently published a podcast interview.

Dr. Nassi holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Computer Science and a B.S. in Mathematics from Stony Brook University. Stony Brook's Computer Science Department published this announcement. In 2008 he completed a global leadership development program at INSEAD.

CV: Download Ike's CV here.

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Patents

	Company	Country	Inventor(s)	Patent #	Grant Date	Title
1	FireTide	PCT	Keith Stuart Klemba, Isaac Robert Nassi, David Neil Cornejo, Lawrence Alan Rosenthal	100425	11/18/04	Dynamic Adaptive Inter-Layer Control of Wireless Data Communication Networks
2	FireTide	US	Keith Stuart Klemba, Isaac Robert Nassi, David Neil Cornejo, Lawrence Alan Rosenthal	7305459	12/4/07	Wireless Service Point Networks
3	FireTide	US	Keith Stuart Klemba, Isaac Robert Nassi, David Neil Cornejo, Lawrence Alan Rosenthal	7522731	4/21/09	Wireless Service Points Having Unique Identifiers for Secure Communications
4	SAP	US	Asuman Suenbuel, Ike Nassi	8108234	1/31/12	System and Method for Deriving Business Processes
5	SAP	US	Yuecel Karabulut, Isaac Nassi	8843415	9/23/14	Secure Software Service Systems and Methods
6	TidalScale	USA	Isaac R. Nassi	9191435	11/17/15	Selective Data Migration Or Remapping Of Virtual Processors To Provide Required Data Accessibility To Processor Cores
7	TidalScale	USA	Isaac R. Nassi	9609048	3/28/17	Resource Request And Transfer In A Multi-Node Distributed System
8	TidalScale	USA	Isaac R. Nassi	10187452	1/22/19	Hierarchical Dynamic Scheduling
9	TidalScale	USA	Isaac R. Nassi	10205772	2/12/19	Selective Resource Migration
10	TidalScale	USA	Isaac R. Nassi, Kleoni Ioannidou, David P. Reed, I-Chun Fang, Michael Berman, Mark Hill, Brian D. Moffet	10353736	7/16/19	Associating Working Sets And Threads
11	TidalScale	S. Korea	Isaac R. Nassi, David P. Reed	10-2051282	11/27/19	Network Attached Memory Using Selective Resource Migration
12	TidalScale	Japan	Isaac R. Nassi, David P. Reed	6652646	1/27/20	Network Attached Memory Using Selective Resource Migration
13	TidalScale	USA	Isaac R. Nassi, Mark Hill, I-Chun Fang, Kleoni Ioannidou	10579421	3/3/20	Dynamic Scheduling Of Virtual Processors In A Distributed System
14	TidalScale	USA	Isaac R. Nassi, Kleoni Ioannidou, Michael Berman, Mark Hill, Brian D. Moffet, Jeffrey Paul Radick, David P. Reed, Keith Reynolds	10579274	3/3/20	Hierarchical Stalling Strategies For Handling Stalling Events In A Virtualized Environment
15	TidalScale	USA	Isaac R. Nassi	10623479	4/14/20	Selective Migration Of Resources Or Remapping Of Virtual Processors To Provide Access To Resources
16	TidalScale	USA	Isaac R. Nassi, Kleoni Ioannidou, Brian D. Moffet, Michael Berman, David P. Reed	10620992	4/14/20	Resource Migration Negotiation
17	TidalScale	USA	Isaac R. Nassi	10645150	5/5/20	Hierarchical Dynamic Scheduling
18	TidalScale	Germany	Isaac R. Nassi, David P. Reed	602016037237.1	5/27/20	Network Attached Memory Using Selective Resource Migration
19	TidalScale	European	Isaac R. Nassi, David P. Reed	3356936	5/27/20	Network Attached Memory Using Selective Resource Migration
20	TidalScale	France	Isaac R. Nassi, David P. Reed	3356936	5/27/20	Network Attached Memory Using Selective Resource Migration
21	TidalScale	UK	Isaac R. Nassi, David P. Reed	3356936	5/27/20	Network Attached Memory Using Selective Resource Migration
22	TidalScale	USA	Isaac R. Nassi, Kleoni Ioannidou, David P. Reed, I-Chun Fang, Michael Berman, Mark Hill, Brian D. Moffet	10783000	9/22/20	Associating Working Sets And Threads
23	TidalScale	USA	Isaac R. Nassi, David P. Reed, Mark Hill	10817347	10/27/20	Entanglement Of Pages And Guest Threads
24	TidalScale	USA	Isaac R. Nassi, Kleoni Ioannidou, Michael Berman, I-Chun Fang, Mark Hill, Brian D. Moffet, Jeffrey Paul Radick, David P. Reed, Keith Reynolds	11023135	6/1/21	Handling Frequently Accessed Pages
25	TidalScale	USA	David P. Reed, Isaac R. Nassi, Gary Smerdon	11050620	6/29/21	Dynamic Reconfiguration Of Resilient Logical Modules In A Software Defined Server
26	TidalScale	Japan	Isaac R. Nassi, Kleoni Ioannidou, David P. Reed, I-Chun Fang, Michael Berman, Mark Hill, Brian D. Moffet	6924820	8/4/21	Associating Working Sets And Threads
27	TidalScale	USA	Isaac R. Nassi	11159605	10/26/21	Hierarchical Dynamic Scheduling
28	TidalScale	China	Isaac R. Nassi, David P. Reed	ZL201680069485.7	11/16/2021	Network Attached Memory Using Selective Resource Migration
29	TidalScale	USA	David P. Reed, Isaac R. Nassi, Pete Jarvis	11175927	11/16/2021	Fast Boot
30	TidalScale	USA	Isaac R. Nassi, David P. Reed	11240334	2/1/22	Network Attached Memory Using Selective Resource Migration
33	TidalScale	USA	Leon Dang, Keith Reynolds, Ike Nassi	11275600	3/15/22	Virtualized I/O
32	TidalScale	USA	Isaac Nassi, Ioannidou, Moffet, Berman, Reed	11403135	8/2/22	Resource Migration Negotiation
33	TidalScale	USA	David Reed, Isaac Nassi	11487451 B2	9/15/22	Fast Restart Of Large Memory Systems
34	TidalScale	USA	Isaac Nassi, Hill, Fang, Ioannidou	11513836	9/14/22	Scheduling Resuming Of Ready to Run Virtual Processors in a Distributed System
35	TidalScale	USA	Isaac R. Nassi et al	11449233	9/20/22	Hierarchical Stalling Strategies For Handling Stalling Events In A Virtualized Environment
36	TidalScale	USA	David Reed, Isaac Nassi, Pete Jarvis	11656878 B2 US020210132979A120210506	5/23/23	Fast Boot
37	TidalScale	USA	David Reed, Isaac Nassi, Gary Smerdon	11627041	4/11/23	Dynamic Reconfiguration of Resilient Logical Modules in a Software Defined Server
38	HPE	PCT	Gary Smerdon, et al	2023/137317 A1	2023-07-20	Memory Wear Leveling (Application)
39	HPE	USA	Isaac R. Nassi et al	11803306 B2	10/31/2023	Handling Frequently Accessed Pages
40	HPE	PCT	Gary Smerdon, et al	2023/229691 A1	2023-11-30	System Wear Leveling (Application)
41	HPE	PCT	Eric Fitzpatrick, et al	2024/005875 A1	2024-01-04	High Availability Systems Having Thinly-Provisioned Secondary Servers (Application)
42	TidalScale	US	Brian D. Moffet, et al	2021/0132979 A1	2021-05-06	Goal-Directed Software-Defined NUMA Working Set Management
43	HPE	US	Isaac R. Nassi, et al	11907768 B2	2024-02-20	Entanglement of Pages and Guest Threads
44	HPE	US	David Reed, Isaac Nassi, Gary Smerdon	12137029 B2	2024-11-05	Dynamic Reconfiguration of Resilient Logical Modules in a Software Defined Server
45	HPE	US	Leon Dang, Keith Reynolds, Isaac Nassi	12282791	2025-04-22	Virtualized I/O


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