William J. Piazza IBM Systems and Technology Group, 3039 Cornwallis Road, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27709 (wpiazza@us.ibm.com). Mr. Piazza is a Senior Technical Staff Member in the xSeries Architecture and Technology Department. He received a B.S.E.E. degree in 1978 from the University of Pittsburgh and an M.S. degree in computer science from the University of Miami in 1996. He joined IBM in 1978 in Boca Raton, Florida, and has worked on the firmware, diagnostics, management software, and architectural design of several IBM desktop, server, and retail store systems. Mr. Piazza represents IBM on the PCI SIG Hot-Plug workgroup; he is the author or coauthor of numerous patents.

Richard E. Harper IBM Research Division, Thomas J. Watson Research Center, P.O. Box 218, Yorktown Heights, New York 10598 (reharper@us.ibm.com). Dr. Harper is a Research Staff Member in the Server Technologies Department at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He received a B.S. degree in physics and an M.S. degree in aerospace engineering from Mississippi State University in 1976 and 1977, respectively, and a Ph.D. degree in computer systems architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987. He joined IBM in 1998 and has worked on architecture and performance analysis of high-end nonuniform memory access/symmetric multiprocessing system (NUMA/SMP) architectures, proactive problem prediction and avoidance technologies, and workload and power management. Dr. Harper is the author or coauthor of numerous patents and technical papers, and has supervised more than two dozen graduate student thesis projects.

Martin J. Crippen IBM Systems and Technology Group, 3039 Cornwallis Road, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27709 (crippen@us.ibm.com). Mr. Crippen is a Senior Technical Staff Member in IBM eServer Power, Packaging, and Cooling Development. He received a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1983 and an M.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Binghamton University in 1994. His experience ranges from the development of mainframe computers to open-system VME computers. Mr. Crippen's field of specialty is electronics packaging, including card-on-board and server-level and rack-level packaging. He is well versed in system cooling and power system architecture. He has been instrumental in the development of many IBM Netfinity* and xSeries servers and is the lead mechanical engineer for the IBM eServer BladeCenter system. Mr. Crippen holds numerous patents in electronics packaging and cooling.

Jason A. Matteson IBM Systems and Technology Group, 3039 Cornwallis Road, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27709 (mattesj@us.ibm.com). Mr. Matteson received an A.S. degree in engineering science from the State University of New York at Alfred in 1994 and a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1997. He began his professional career with IBM as a mechanical engineer, supporting the mechanical development team with system and hardware design. He received an IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award for the thermal design and support of one of the first 1U, dual-P4 Intel Xeon** servers. He supports IBM key customers with data-center cooling concerns and issues resulting from ultra-dense server deployments. Mr. Matteson has authored or coauthored several patents and technical bulletin disclosure publications.

*Trademark or registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation.
**Trademark or registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. or Intel Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.