ISS Technology Focus, Number 12

Meet the Expert—Roger Tipley
Name: Roger Tipley
Title: Engineering Strategist, ISS
Years at HP: 23+
University/Degree: Oregon State
University, B.S. Electrical Engineering,
1982
U.S. Patents: 18
Roger Tipley is an Engineering Strategist for Industry Standard Servers
(ISS) in HP Enterprise Servers, Storage, and Networking (ESSN). Originally
from small towns in eastern Oregon and northwest Washington, it’s no
surprise that Roger has a passion for energy-efficient and sustainable
design practices. He leads the HP teams that plan for ENERGY STAR and
EPEAT compliance, and he is the vice president and a member of the board
of The Green Grid Association. He is also the PCI Express 3.0 czar for ISS
and handles field-outage case analysis for microprocessors. Dwight Barron,
Roger’s manager, says, “Roger has a great combination of technical
expertise, leadership, and customer passion. He is often asked to help solve
complex problems that require a blend of those skills.”
Helped design the original PCI
Roger’s favorite patent came just after he switched from designing cache
memory controllers to designing multiprocessor bus architecture for the
SystemPro XL in1991. He’s very proud of the patented bus arbitration
scheme and of the team that collaborated on the SystemPro XL product
family. The same group of engineers designed the first ProLiant branded
servers and created a high-performance platform. The design led to
ProLiant's early dominance in industry-standard servers and contributed to
its more than 20 consecutive years as the No. 1 server product line, based
on unit sales and market share. In 1992, Roger was one of the architects of
the original PCI bus. He also spent 10 years on the board of directors for the
PCI-SIG, including more than 2 years as president and board chairman.
He values customer input
Around 2004, power management emerged as a critically needed solution
because data centers didn’t have enough power and cooling to handle rising
power densities. As a result, customers were unable to fill their racks with
servers. Through HP ISS Tech Exchange events and key customer visits in
various cities, Roger and other HP engineers were able to gather invaluable
information from end users about their requirements and limitations. The
solutions for those customer requirements are reflected in today’s ProLiant
servers, PODs, infrastructure solutions, and management software
products. For example, the success of HP BladeSystem server designs
resulted from HP engineers taking a holistic approach that included power
and cooling optimization at all levels of the data center.