Boyd Multerer
Creator of Scenic and lead engineering for Xbox Live, XNA
Boyd’s near 30-year career spans the range of software projects, from desktop publishing, to web servers, to game consoles, to low-level operating systems. For the past four years, he has been independently exploring and building a full stack for Connected Devices that heavily leverages the BEAM.
Previously, Boyd spent 18 years at Microsoft running engineering for things such as Xbox Live, XNA (game developer program), and everything OS for Xbox One. This work includes large scaled-out datacenter services, VMs, and the layout of the hypervisor/kernel.
His most recent release is the open-source Scenic libraries, which is a functional UI stack built on the BEAM. Its primary goal is for use in connected devices, but it is already being used for desktop apps and more. His current work takes the foundation laid with Scenic and is attempting to answer deeper questions about the future of client-side operating systems.
Past Activities
Code BEAM V America
11.50 - 12.30
The Kry10 Operating System: Security and the BEAM
After years of work, we are finally ready to start discussing the upcoming Kry10 Operating System, which is designed for both high security and running the BEAM as a first-class application. In his talk, Boyd will give a preview, discuss goals, directions and show working code. Whilst we will get an update on the Scenic UI framework, emphasis will be on the OS and where it fits into the larger ecosystem.
Code BEAM America 2021
12.55 - 13.40
Trust but Isolate. The future of software
There are many trends, fads, and movements that sweep through the world of software. Yet somehow, the underlying fundamentals have remained largely unchanged for the past 30 years. The rapidly advancing cyber-attack environment combined with the use of networked computers in critical infrastructure, are causing a reckoning with the way computers, and all software is built.
Strong isolation, from the top to the bottom of the stack is foundational. Erlang and the BEAM, as with so many other things, was way ahead of its time and pointed this direction many years ago. We are going to look at some of those lessons and show how they can used as a first-principle to design a fast, robust, and secure that is positioned for the next 30 years of computing.
Strong Isolation is an inevitable shift that will reverberate through the industry. Understanding it now is essential to navigating the next round of scaled out software and computer deployments.
Code BEAM STO 2019
09.05 - 09.50
Natively Functional UI with Scenic
Get to know Scenic, the first fully functional UI system built directly for and on the BEAM.
Boyd will show the high-level concepts and functionality of Scenic, including latest developments. Building a UI system on the BEAM is also a great way to understand supervision trees.
This talk will demonstrate software isolation, recovery, concurrency and more using Scenic to directly see what is going on.
OBJECTIVES
- Get to know Scenic.
- Learn about why functional UI is great and what can be done with it.
- Understand when and where to build functional UI and why it is particularly good for connected devices.
- Gain a deeper understanding of supervision trees through visual demonstrations with Scenic.
- Layout where Scenic is going in the next releases.
TARGET AUDIENCE
Everybody interested in building connected devices (IoT) with the BEAM. Also good for beginner to intermediate developers who want a visual understanding of supervision trees.