KernelTrap Interviews Andrea Arcangeli

An anonymous reader writes "Andrea Arcangeli completely rewrote the 2.4 Linux kernel virtual memory subsystem several years ago, a surprising event during the evolution of a stable kernel series. A very intelligent 27-year-old from Italy, Andrea spoke with KernelTrap in great detail about the past, present and future of his Linux kernel efforts. An interesting interview ."

Comments

Surprise

[gowen]

Linux hacker : Age 27 : lives with in parents house.

Who'd've thunk it, eh?

Re:Surprise

[nathanhart]

Hey the rents cheap, the foods free and only once or twice a day you have to answer one of their computer questions

Re:Surprise

[KarmaPolice]

Linux hacker : Age 27 : lives with in parents house.

Who'd've thunk it, eh?
Actually, most italian men live with their parents until they get married.

Re:Surprise

[CharAznable]

In many countries, it's customary to live with your parents until you get married and move away. That's how it is in Costa Rica, where I'm from. I wouldn't be surprised that Italy is the same way, them being so family oriented.

Re:Surprise

[cluckshot]

It just isn't the same in the USA as the rest of the world. Generally the rest of the world expects kids to stay at home until they marry. The compressed locations of Europe and Asia tend to make this most practical. They also have a real good social order that tends to respect the idea that family is very important.

The USA grew up with people who had really moved out (to another country) and also with lots of space. As such we tend to view it as a requirement to move out. I think in many ways the Non US way is superior in human terms. It does have its price. The US way has its own advantages.

Nice to see some recognition for kernel devs.

[Henrik S. Hansen]

Very nice to see some recognition for the kernel developers and other Free Software developers.

To me, they really are some sort of modern day heroes.

Re:Nice to see some recognition for kernel devs.

[tanguyr]

The subject of this interview works for, and is paid by, SUSE - which belongs to Novell: When I started working for SUSE I was still attending University but over time I got more interested about the work I was doing on linux, plus I could make a living thanks to linux while I didn't get any money by studying more years at University ;).

Your pov is a pretty common misconception: big business profiting from the work of hundreds of thousands of idealistic but naive developpers. The truth of the matter is that big business wants - needs - enterprise features in open source software, and you're going to get there a heck of a lot faster by paying somebody to develop them than you are waiting for some guy to decide that he personally *really needs* to support 32 parallel processors.

Amazing considering no education above high school

[drizst 'n drat]

Andrea Arcangeli: I've no degree yet, the only piece of paper I have is the high school diploma. I wasn't that bad at school, for instance I surprisingly got 60/60 votation in the diploma and maximal votes at University too for all the software related exams, and I loved studying physics and electronics too (not only computers). It always amazes me when people, without formal education, can accomplish so much. I've seen a lot of this with folks to receive their backgrounds from non-traditional sources such as Computer Learning Center and the like.

RTFA

[Nuclear Elephant]

Andrea spoke with KernelTrap in great detail about the past, present and future of his Linux kernel efforts.

Sorry, looks like she's a he. I was really hoping it would turn out to be a chick - chicks that can rewrite Linux components are extremely sexy.

Higher education yes, degree no

[Anonymous Coward]

He has higher education, he just doesn't have the degree. The article indicates that he learned a great deal from his college courses.

A degree gets you an interview. What you learned gets you the job. AA skipped the interview step ;-)

EEK!

[NicolaiBSD]

The parallel port was the device I knew best in the PC hardware because for the final exam at high school we developed an autorange (from a few millivolt to thousand of volts) digital oscilloscope (designing both hardware and software) and I was acquiring the data from the 8 bits output of the ADC using the parallel port in nibble mode with a multiplexer with x86 inline assembler in a C++ program.

If you understand this sentence you know you're a geek.

Re:EEK!

[KJE]

When I read this all I could think of was that I wish I had gone to his highschool.

Re:EEK!

[Lemmeoutada Collecti]

Using the Paralell port with an ADC is actually fairly easy. You just connect the input to a neutral grounded source to prevent circuit noise, feed the input from the analog waveform source (a calibrated RF generator works nicely) and adjust the capacitance to normalize the digital output. Use the multiplexer to allow more than one input to be sampled, and code the assembly to sample nibbles in a round robin based on the matched timing of the data strobe from the ADC. Using the paralell port results in stepping of the data, as the maximum resolution of the scope is limited by the 8 bits of the port. However, with multiplexing, some of the multiplexed channels can be used to widen the bit count to 16, 24, or 32. I never tried it above 32, as the 8086 I was using was unable to sample fast enough beyond that, even in assembly. Process the port input as a large integer and convert that to a pixel position (and numeric readout if desired) in simple integer to fixed point math.

The hardest part is eliminating the circuit noise for millivolt readings. In larger waveforms (5v and higher) the noise is mostly drowned, but at the millivolt range, any circuit noise, or any unmatched grounding, causes jitters in the waveform being read. Calibration to the range is essential for any serious reading.

And for fun, hook an unamplified output from a portable CD player to the scope, and viola, instant waveform display of the sound signal. Great way to relax on a lazy sunday, listen to and watch the music. Of course, this was in the pre winamp days, so it was a Walkman.

[/Meandering off]

That Sheila's a he!

[RoloDMonkey]

Poor Andrea, now he is going to get slashdotted by a bunch of lonely geeks that didn't RTFA, and think that he is a she.

hm

[Anonymous Coward]

after reading that article i feel as though my programming skills are on par with a primate.

Mod Parent Up

[sonpal]

Andrea did some cool stuff. How come our high schools don't teach us how to:

Live off the land

Modify our cars

Hack computers

Understand personal finance

Write contracts

Defend ourselves in court

Defend ourselves physically

Handle a gun safely

Think critically

Change our government for the better

It seems to me that too much focus is given to understanding the past and not enough to understanding the present. Don't get me wrong, knowing the past is valuable, but I think that if we teach people about the present, people are naturally going to be interested in the past.

In general, people don't need to know how to calculate the area under a curve. But everyone needs to know how to think critically and not be manipulated.

Andrea likes TCPA

[swillden]

I found this bit really interesting (and insightful, actually, more on that below):

Actually in my spare time I had an idea of one revolutionary and ambitious project I can build on top of the trusted computing capable hardware (that project has nothing to do with linux by the way, but for it to run on linux too, linux would need to provide some basic trusted computing support), that's something I wanted to build for a long time but it has never been feasible until they added the trusted computing to the hardware and they filled the gap to make my idea possible, so I'm quite happy about these new hardware features (despite clearly they can be misused for some annoying things too).

I bring it up because this is so contrary to the common opinion on /., which is that TCPA is unabashedly evil and has no utility. Andrea is obviously one very smart guy, and a person who feels the need to have complete control over his machine, but who likes TCPA in spite of the risk of misuse. Contradiction?

The fact is that TCPA *is* an extremely useful and valuable technology for systems that require a high degree of security. It's not clear to me that the average home PC benefits from it, but it's very valuable for cheap, high-performance key management systems and cryptographic accelerators, systems that contain valuable data (like many businessmen's laptops), and systems at critical points in network infrastructure. I'm sure there are other valuable, and non rights-eroding, applications as well.

In my work as a designer and developer of high-security systems, I'm extremely excited about the fact that we can now buy low-end computing equipment that has TCP hardware. It enables so much. The next step is TCP hardware that is tamper-resistant, or even tamper-reactive, but still cheap. For now, really high-security systems still require something better, but TCPA can fill the niche between systems that require serious security and those that can get by with purely software-based security (or no security, which is fine for the majority of desktops and laptops).

To be clear, DRM is a bad idea, in general. The business applications (self-destructing documents, confidential documents that cannot be printed) do have potential utility, but I doubt they're worth the complexity they'll create. And Palladium aka NGSCB aka whatever-it's-called-today is an unquestionably evil notion, focused on removing the ability of people to control their own hardware, in an effort to allow a couple of declining business models to prop one another up.

IMO, what geek activists need to focus on is not killing the development of tools like TCPA, but rather on legal and social means of ensuring our rights.

Tools are not evil. Only users are evil.

My how he has come along in 8 years...

[ZombieEngineer]

A bit of background history for the parport driver. This original started by two guys (Philip Blundell and Tim Waugh) blabbering about treating the parallel port as bus. There was something like ten e-mails for a couple of days while most of the regulars were scratching their heads.

The parallel port ZIP drive maintainer asked them to provide a function prototype of this thing that they were talking about, of them (Phil/Tim) quickly whipped up a rough 50 line C header file which was turned into a working parport driver + parport enabled ZIP and printer driver (removing the infamous "printer-on-fire" message in the process). There were bugs in the parport driver (it was the first pass but you could print and use the ZIP drive together which was something that previously could not be done) but Phil/Tim/Andrea quickly pounced on the driver and straighten it out. Some of the routines for supporting NatSemi and SMC chipsets are there due to the ZIP drive maintainer not being able to use EPP mode on his Dell desktop.

When Andrea first appeared on the parallel port scene he was lacking a little confidence (appologising for his poor english which was far better than my italian :-) but once he got his feet wet with kernel hacking there was nothing stopping him.

Unfortunately I dropped out of the parallel port group around 2000 due to work commitments (linux hacking was one of those phases that I went through).

I congratulate Andrea on where his life has taken him.

ZombieEngineer

Formerly-the-hacker-who-maintained-linux-zip-drive rs.