Alumni Spotlight: John Howard, Computer Software Engineering Technology

Oregon native John Howard went from remaining a disinterested math student to taking part in an critical purpose in creating the USB (Universal Serial Bus), attributing lots of of his occupation chances to his connection with Oregon Tech. John grew up in Beatty, Oregon, a little city east of Klamath Falls. As a university student at Bonanza Superior Faculty, John was an average university student. He and his brothers were being additional interested in playing athletics, so proper out of high school, John enrolled at Oregon Tech to play soccer. Following a single year at the Klamath Falls campus, he recognized most of his mates were doing work, creating money, buying automobiles, and carrying out the things John wished to be executing. John remaining faculty and joined his substantial-university good friends doing the job for a logging railroad for a number of decades. When the logging field skilled monetary difficulties, though, John became unsatisfied with the evolution to “part-time” employment. John returned to college, affected by a good friend who was graduating from the pc sciences division at Oregon Tech. That buddy was Calvin Caldwell, who turned a professor at Oregon Tech and nonetheless teaches there currently!

John returned to Oregon Tech at age 21 and enrolled in the Pc Software Engineering Engineering plan. Right after his crack from faculty, the very first pair of phrases were being rough, but John was decided to concentrate and reconnect. As John jokingly explains, he “was not the sharpest pencil in the box,” but he persevered with the aid of professors and classmates. One of John’s professors advisable him for an internship as a technological author at Tektronix in Vancouver, WA the summer months following his junior yr. That internship not only assured him a position right after graduation, but the company also compensated for his senior year of higher education. John feels that Oregon Tech’s powerful popularity served that become a fact.

After graduating from Oregon Tech in 1985, John labored at Tektronix for a 12 months and started off his master’s degree in Laptop or computer Engineering at the only institution supplying graduate levels in computer science at the time, Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Know-how (component of the OHSU academic technique). Lots of OIT alumni went through the graduate system collectively at the identical time. Fellow Oregon Tech alumnus John Keith was doing work at Intel at the time. By this connection, Intel hired John as a software package technician to work on a collaborative challenge identified as the Gemini Challenge involving Intel and Siemens, accomplishing groundbreaking work, building a fully new fault-tolerant personal computer program. Following that project, John transferred to Sequent Personal computers as a firmware engineer in advance of returning to Intel. He credits his alumni connections at Intel for the chance to return, this time as a components engineer on the to start with technology memory controller for the P6 (Pentium Pro) processor.

A few decades afterwards, John was recruited to operate on a new challenge at Intel, establishing the USB, a thing he has worked on for several yrs. John’s get the job done on the USB has earned him numerous patents. His provider with the market consortium that worked on the USB (Intel and six other organizations) offered him expertise with technical leadership of sector requirements operating teams. He collaborated with top rated-notch computer system architects from across the market on USB hardware and software program, led workgroups, developed procedures all around fairness and voting, and extra. John has been privileged to lead to all generations of USB (they are up to USB4 now). John developed the hardware/program interfaces for the 1st two generations of USB host controller (UHCI and EHCI) and was the technical direct for the software stack for the very first commercially out there USB products and solutions centered on the UHCI. John also co-led the program crew establishing the USB compliance applications. He was the lead architect for Certified Wi-fi USB and developed the protocol architecture employed in the definition for Media-Agnostic USB. For USB 3., John authored the architecture chapter in the specification and transitioned to a mentor function for the technical workgroups and continues to participate in USB connected requirements actions.  

Now, John operates on enter/output (I/O) assignments as an I/O Architect for Intel. As a senior technical leader, he enjoys shelling out about a 3rd of his time mentoring junior engineers. When describing his colleagues and the jobs he operates on, he claims, “I simply cannot think I get compensated for carrying out this! It’s just exciting!” While John acknowledges the issues and finding out curves through the many years, he also carefully enjoys the system. He ponders the concept of teaching right after retirement in this industry that he enjoys so considerably.

When not operating, which is seldom, John enjoys paying out time with his spouse, Oregon Tech Civil Engineering alumna Kim Roske ‘85, and their collegiate son and daughter. He advises Oregon Tech students that “hard get the job done and integrity acquire you a extensive way in the marketplace.” He also describes that “every work that I have experienced in my job has been both instantly or indirectly attributed to alumni from OIT. Alums are incredibly significant!”

In recognition of his accomplishments establishing the USB, John was lately awarded the 2022 Scientific Accomplishment award at Oregon Tech. Congrats to John! We are very pleased to call you and your wife alumni of Oregon Tech.