I think in the 10th grade our English teacher asked the class what do you want to do when you grow up? Most people didn’t have an answer. I answered “I want to build computers”. Well, my career has been really blessed with my being a part of 10 industrial computer system designs from the ground up! Most of these projects were with SGI/Silicon Graphics, where I went from engineering manager to VP of Engineering.
I am most proud of 3 of these systems, not well known outside of research and academia, the SGI Challenge, Origin, and Altix.
As an engineer, one knows that most of ones work decays very rapidly, and is soon scrapped. However I was privileged to be the decision maker and leader of the team which put the operating system called Linux onto the first server, the SGI Altix. I will claim my team drove Linux from a single processor desktop OS to a server OS, which is now dominate in the world of servers! This accomplishment will stand for some decades.
I ended my career at Intel Corporation, where I actually started out of college, and met my spouse Paulette, now 41 years married. My last project at Intel was to be my 11th computer system, however we both decided to retire while we were still in good health and could travel.
We raised our family in California, but now both daughters work in the DC area, so we have followed and settled in Virginia, to be near them.
In retirement I have found two new entertainments, dessert baking, and 3D print designs. You can see some of my work in baking here: https://food52.com/users/1351210-rich-altmaier/recipes
And some of my 3D designs here: https://www.thingiverse.com/richalt2/designs
Both of these are keeping my brain active!
