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ISS Technology Update
Meet the Expert—Eric Pope
Eric Pope has been a Memory Engineer for HP Industry Standard Servers (ISS) for
the last six years of his ten-year career at HP. His responsibilities include memory
futures, qualification, quality, and sustaining.
According to his manager, Theresa Maglitto, Eric provides technical expertise in
all aspects of HP memory. She regards him as a memory technology innovator,
educator, problem solver, and customer advocate. And he is a key reason why HP
maintains memory technology leadership in the server industry.
A born ―fixer‖
Eric has always been interested in how things work. As a kid, he not only fixed
things (for mom) when they broke, he sometimes took things apart before they
broke. His interest in electrical engineering began when he took an electronics
class in high school.
Now Eric and his wife Joni have three little fixers: Joshua (14), Timothy (12) and
Taylor (10). His hobbies include, camping, fishing, hiking, music, and
woodworking. In woodworking, as with memory technology, Eric likes to create a
vision of what he needs and then figure out how to achieve it.
An HP memory qualification expert
Memory manufacturers constantly change their manufacturing processes as they
make faster and more complex memory chips. One of Eric's responsibilities is to
qualify each memory module design and manufacturing process to minimize the
occurrence of hard errors. He focuses on ways to improve memory processes, and he has developed several test tools for
internal and external test teams. These tools allow engineers to test each type of memory module in the model of ProLiant server
in which it will be installed. Eric also helps to re-qualify module manufacturers each time HP offers a new processor speed or a
new server platform. This testing and re-qualification process results in continuous improvement of memory module reliability.
Over the past year, Eric has been working on simplifying the memory qualification process. Historically, every test case has
required human intervention to kick off the test and analyze the results. Eric is working to implement a more automated
approach to test memory. Aided by new circuitry in today's servers, he is ―sewing together‖ different software components to
conduct the tests without human intervention, that is until the DIMMs need to be changed to run a new test.
Puts customers first
Theresa says that Eric has participated in many customer and sales events to help educate those who buy or sell HP memory.
Eric is also a key contributor in the direct communications between the Engineering Problem Resolution team and customers. His
primary goal is to make customers happy by solving their problems; therefore, he values their input. He cited some recent
examples of the HP response to customer requirements: the introduction of low power memory and the introduction of 8GB and
16GB DIMMs. Eric also noted that HP was the first company to give its customers the ability to run DDR-3 memory at PC3-
10600 (DDR3-1333) speeds with two DIMMs loaded per channel.
Volume 8, Number 5
Name:
Eric Pope
Title:
Memory Engineer, ISS
Years at HP:
10
University:
Brigham Young University, MSEE
Brigham Young University, BSEE
8
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