\u201cHow did you get involved in standards,\u201d I was asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy work on SystemVerilog comes from an early exposure to IEEE standards, much like you are getting today,\u201d I told them.<\/p>\n
In the late 1970\u2019s a visiting lecture from Hewlett-Packard spent a year at UC Davis where I went to school.\u00a0 One of the courses I took was a hardware interface to computers course that borrowed from the Hewlett-Packard Interface Bus (HP-IB<\/a>).\u00a0 While we all called the protocol HP-IB, it was already an IEEE standard.\u00a0 Today it is known as IEEE Std 488.1\u2122-2003<\/a>.<\/p>\n Recently I visited IEEE Xplore and downloaded the current standard and the content, as I would expect, looks nothing like the one I bought for my class.\u00a0 Print was professional as all the standards look today.\u00a0 Even the state diagrams are computer generated.<\/p>\n This was my first IEEE standard I bought, studied and built prototype interfaces to connect.\u00a0 While one might have expected we would have spent 100% of our course time on the application of what we were learning, we did not.\u00a0 We got a dose of indoctrination<\/em> on the importance of standards.\u00a0 \u201cThere may be times in your professional career where you may need to volunteer on standards development: Do it,\u201d we were told.<\/p>\n This is the story I related to those learning SystemVerilog in Noida.\u00a0 I told them the knowledge they gain may prove to be indispensable in the work they do in the years ahead.\u00a0 But thank you for the question on how I got involved in standards, as it reminds me I should encourage you to be mindful of standards in your future.\u00a0 Let me pass on what I learned from Hewlett-Packard that if there is a time in your professional career where you\u00a0 may need to volunteer for standards development: Do it.<\/p>\n In late 2006, my home phone number rings.\u00a0 I answer.\u00a0 \u201cHi, this is Don Loughry calling on behalf of the IEEE and I have some good news to share with you.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cWhat is the good news,\u201d I ask.\u00a0 \u201cYou have been elected to the IEEE Standards Association Board of Governors.\u00a0 As past chair it is my privilege to bring you this news,\u201d he says.\u00a0 [\u2026] \u201cThank you, I look forward to serving,\u201d I said as I concluded the call.<\/p>\n Not too long ago, I related the story of getting involved in standards \u2013 the story above – with the now chair of the IEEE SA BoG, Steve Mills.\u00a0 Steve is with Hewlett-Packard Co. and told me that standardization of HP-IB\/IEEE 488 was the work of Don Loughry.\u00a0 He was also instrumental in setting a corporate culture that was pro-standardization and Steve told me the encouragement I got\u00a0 to \u201cthink standards\u201d while in college is \u201call Don.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2012\/04\/488.1_Page_001-e1333391970986-520x657.jpg\")
<\/a>In addition to the normal material that had to be purchased for the class, I also had to buy a copy of the IEEE standard.\u00a0 My first thought was the standard was expensive!\u00a0 When looking inside the standard, it looked more like a someone used an IBM Selectric<\/a> typewriter to write it and inserted hand-drawn state diagrams.\u00a0 Maybe I bought a draft of the standard instead.\u00a0 This is not at all the IEEE standards of today.<\/p>\nMy Mentor, In Pectore<\/a><\/h3>\n
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<\/a>Many weeks later, my office number rings and I answer.\u00a0 \u201cHi this is Don Loughry calling.\u00a0 Dennis, is this you,\u201d he asks.\u00a0 \u201cYes, this is Dennis,\u201d I say.\u00a0 \u201cDid you see the email I sent to you asking if you would join the Charles Proteus Steinmetz<\/a> awards committee,\u201d he asked.\u00a0 \u201cNo, I can\u2019t recall seeing that email.\u00a0 Does your email come in with your first or last name listed,\u201d I asked.\u00a0 “Neither,\u201d Don told me.\u00a0 \u201cYou will see my email address as \u2018Sunkist,\u2019\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cOh, I thought I got some message from the \u2018orange company\u2019 and did not read it.\u00a0 Let me do that now,\u201d I said.\u00a0 And, yes I joined the committee.\u00a0 [From this moment on, Don Loughry was known to me as Sunkist, though I never told him.]<\/p>\n