Speaker Bios

List sorted by Companies

Shrenik Mehta, Chair, Accellera
Shrenik Mehta is Senior Director of Frontend Technologies and OpenSPARC program at SunMicrosystems. Shrenik is also currently the Chair of Accellera, an industry standardsorganization and was the Vice Chair of the IEEE 1800 SystemVerilog Working Group.Shrenik has more than 23 years of industry experience in the area of Microprocessor development.He holds eight US patents and one patent in Taiwan.
He has a Masters degree in Computer Engineering from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor anda Bachelor's degree from Institute of Technology - BHU, Varansasi (India).

Richard Kapusta, VP Marketing, Actel
Coming soon

John Daane, CEO & Chairman of the Board, Altera
Mr. Daane has served as our president and chief executive officer since November 2000 and was named chairman of the board in May 2003. He has served as one of our directors since December 2000. Prior to joining us, Mr. Daane spent 15 years at LSI Logic Corporation, a semiconductor manufacturer, most recently as executive vice president, communications products group. In this role, he was responsible for ASIC technology development and the computer, consumer, and communications divisions.

David Greenfield, Senior Director, HardCopy ASICs, Altera
David Greenfield is the senior director of HardCopy ASICs at Altera. Mr. Greenfield joined Altera in 1995 and has held several management and marketing positions, including senior director of product marketing for high-end FPGAs, director of tools marketing and EDA relations, and manager of target applications. Before joining Altera, he held ASIC marketing, field applications engineering, and design center manager positions with Wyle Electronics, and staff design engineering positions with Hughes Aircraft. Mr. Greenfield holds a BS in Engineering from Harvey Mudd College, an MS in Electrical Engineering from University of Southern California, and an MBA from UCLA and has nearly 25 years of semiconductor and ASIC design experience.

Mark Martin, Vice President and General Manager, Micromachined Products Division, Analog Devices, Inc.
Mark Martin joined Analog Devices in 1985 and is the Vice President and General Manager of the Micromachined Products Division. Prior to joining this division, Mr. Martin led ADI’s RF and Wireless Systems business targeting the world wide mobile handset market. Mr. Martin’s other roles at ADI included leading regional marketing and application teams focused on: wireless communications and consumer markets in China, Taiwan, Korea, and Singapore; High Speed Consumer and Communications; and High Speed Converters.
Mr. Martin holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University as well as a M.S. in Engineering Management from the Gordon Institute of Tufts University.

Steven Lewis, Product Marketing Director, Cadence
Steven Lewis is the Product Marketing Director for the Virtuoso Custom Design Platform at Cadence. The Virtuoso platform incorporates Cadence's tools and methodologies for addressing the analog, RFIC and mixed-signal markets. Steven has worked in the EDA industry for the last 20 years, starting his career with Daisy and working with Cadence Design Systems for almost 17 years. At Cadence, he has worked in a variety of roles in both the customer support and R&D areas. Steven graduated with his BSEE from Santa Clara University in 1987.

John Raaum, CEO, Arctic Silicon Devices
John Raaum was educated at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, in Trondheim, Norway, and earned his M.Sc. in 1991. After 3 years with research activities on MMIC design at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment FFI, he joined Nordic Semiconductor ASA. At Nordic Semiconductor John held different positions within the ASIC department where he was responsible for analog design methodology, commercial and technical sales and implementation of ASICs. John also has experience from product industrialization and high volume IC and MEMS production through manager positions at SensoNor ASA and Q-Free ASA.
John co-founded Arctic Silicon Devices in May 2007 and took on the responsibility as the CEO. On a record short time Arctic Silicon Devices launched in 2008 a family of 16 state-of-the-art analog to digital data converters with the lowest power consumption in the market.
The company is capitalized to confirm and strengthen its position as the leading supplier of low power analog and mixed signal ICs and ASSP on a long term basis. The company is located in Trondheim, Norway, a city known for its leading cluster of semiconductor companies in the Nordic countries.

Bruno Kranzen, Sr. Director Mobile Power Solutions, Fairchild
Bruno Kranzen is the senior director of Fairchild Semiconductor’s Mobile Power Solutions. His responsibities include collaborating with customers on defining and delivering high quality, high volume power management products for cell phones and other mobile systems.
Kranzen received an Industrial Engineering Degree from the XIOS engineering school in Hasselt, Belgium. Following his military service in the Belgian army, he immigrated to the United States and started his career as an IC designer at Zilog Inc. where he was primarily focused on the development of mixed-signal ICs for consumer electronics. His experience also includes Engineering and Marketing director for the Portable Power Systems product line at National Semiconductor. He has more than 20 years experience in the semiconductor industry.

Dr. Martin Rofheart , Senior Vice President, Gennum
Dr. Martin Rofheart joined Gennum in November 2006 as Senior Vice President, Corporate Development, with the responsibility for driving new strategic business opportunities, including strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions. In August 2007, he was promoted to Senior Vice President and General Manager, Analog & Mixed-signal Products and is responsible for developing high-performance mixed signal and analog market opportunities.
A leading authority in wireless audio and video technology, Dr. Rofheart was co-founder and CEO of XtremeSpectrum, which developed the industry's first ultra-wideband (UWB) products for high data rate, short distance wireless transmissions in consumer electronics devices. XtremeSpectrum was acquired by Freescale Semiconductor in 2003, where he then served as director of the UWB division. In his roles with XtremeSpectrum and Freescale, Dr. Rofheart managed a global product development and sales organization and worked closely with key customers in the U.S., Korea, China and Japan in deploying this new technology. He also developed critical partnerships with global industry leaders for various consumer applications.
Considered a leading authority on the wireless industry and winner of the 2005 Wall Street Journal Innovation Award for wireless technology, Dr. Rofheart holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the City University of New York (CUNY/CCNY) with a specialization in digital signal processing.

Jim Lai, President & COO, Global Unichip
Jim Lai has 24 years of experience in semiconductor and ASIC industries. Jim currently serves as president and COO of Global Unichip Corp. Mr. Lai was promoted from TSMC North America to GUC in 2003 when TSMC became the major shareholder of GUC. From 1992 to 2003, Jim served various positions at TSMC North America, including director of emerging account, director of design services and business manager responsible for the ASIC business unit. Prior to TSMC, Mr. Lai co-founded ASICtronics, one of the earliest design service companies to provide ASIC design consultation and libraries. Prior to ASICtronics, Mr. Lai worked at Toshiba America, Knights Technology and LSI Logic in various engineering positions in ASIC and CAD groups. Mr. Lai received his Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from University of California, Santa Barbara in 1984 and his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University in 1981.

Eric D. Eisenhut, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Kionix
Mr. Eisenhut came to Kionix from of MedHesives, Inc. where, as President and CEO, he successfully applied technical resources to delivering the commercial introduction of a platform technology based on photoinitiated polymerization. The product line, North Sea Resins, supplied the industrial and marine markets.
From 1998 to 2002, he was Vice President of Sales for Atmel Corporation’s Wireless and Microcontrollers Division. Mr. Eisenhut managed North and South American sales and business development. He directed activities impacting the automotive, communications, industrial, and aerospace markets.
For four years, Mr. Eisenhut was a Communications Segment Sales Director for TEMIC Semiconductor and managed a team responsible for international key accounts within the communications and broadcast media market segments.
Mr. Eisenhut received his Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree from Manhattan College. Following graduation, he accepted an engineering position with IBM

Vijay Ullal, Group President, Maxim
Vijay Ullal joined Maxim in 1989 as Senior Member of Technical Staff, and brought Maxim 7 years of process and manufacturing experience. Over the years Mr. Ullal deepened his experience in technology development, manufacturing, supply chain activities, and cost control. He oversaw the development of over 80% of the Company's process technologies, and orchestrated the purchase and ramp-up of five wafer fabs. He managed fab operations and was responsible for significant improvements in manufacturing and packaging. Mr. Ullal holds several patents in mixed-signal process technology. After several advancements with increasing levels of responsibility, he was named Senior Vice President of Worldwide Process Technology. In his current role as Group President, Mr. Ullal is responsible for the definition, development, manufacturing, and marketing of products for the Handheld Consumer Division which consists of four of the Company's business units. He also oversees front-end process and wafer-level package technology development at four sites, and wafer fab manufacturing at five sites. Mr. Ullal is a board member of Viciciv, an FPGA (field-programmable gate array) startup, and is a founder of the Bay Area IITM alumni association. He has been active in charitable works for women in India. Mr. Ullal holds a BSChemE degree from the Indian Institute of Technology at Madras, and an MSChemE degree from Drexel University.

Walden C. Rhines, CEO & Chairman, Mentor Graphics
Walden C. Rhines, 61, is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Mentor Graphics, a leader in worldwide electronic design automation with revenue of $792 million in 2006. During his tenure at Mentor Graphics, revenue has more than doubled, growth rate since 1999 has been number one among the “Big 3” EDA companies and Mentor has grown the industry’s number one market share solutions in physical verification, design concept-through-functional verification and printed circuit board design.

Pravin Madhani, General Manager, Place and Route Division, Mentor Graphics
Pravin Madhani brings more than 16 years of experience in the EDA industry. Pravin Madhani was Founder, President & CEO of Sierra Design Automation. Sierra was a venture-backed startup in the area of deep-submicron place & route tools and was acquired by Mentor Graphics Corporation in 2007. Prior to co-founding Sierra, he was the Founder, President & CEO of Everest Design Automation. Everest was acquired by Synopsys in November, 1998. Mr. Madhani has also held various positions in marketing, R&D and management with Synopsys, SGI/MIPS EDA division, and LSI Logic EDA division. Mr. Madhani received his Masters in Computer Engineering from University of Texas at Austin and Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India.

Kevin Dallas, General Manager, Microsoft Windows Embedded
As general manager of the Embedded Windows Embedded Business Unit
at Microsoft Corp., Kevin Dallas is responsible for the product planning and management of all of the Windows Embedded product lines. Kevin has held a number of different positions since joining Microsoft in May 1995 including Senior Director of Strategic Alliances, Director Product Management Group for Windows Mobile Devices, Group Product Manager for Windows Embedded CE and Group Product Manager for Windows.
Prior to joining Microsoft, Kevin worked in the semiconductor industry at NVIDIA (pre IPO) and National Semiconductor (in US/EUR/Middle East) in roles that included General Management, Corporate Development, Product Management, Microprocessor Design and Systems Engineering. Kevin holds a bachelors degree in computer science and business from Staffordshire University in England. His hobbies and interests include squash, soccer, and spending time with his wife Angela and three children Kyle, Nathan and Ryan.

Ian Brown, Vice President Sales and Marketing, Microvision
Ian D. Brown joined Microvision from GE Healthcare, a subsidiary of General Electric, most recently serving as the America's Sales and Marketing Manager for its $100M+ Nuclear Medicine unit. At GE, Brown was responsible for defining and executing the "go-to-market" and commercialization strategies for Nuclear Medicine products in the Americas. Brown was instrumental in three major product launches of Nuclear medicine cameras, the most recent being a small footprint product for cardiac imaging. Brown is a Six Sigma certified Blackbelt and Master Blackbelt.

Gordon Mortensen, Engineering Director Advanced Power, National Semiconductor
Gordon Mortensen is the Engineering Director for Advanced Power in the Power Management group at National Semiconductor in Santa Clara California. Gordon has 26 years of experience in the semiconductor industry in engineering management, as a design engineer, and as a product engineer. Gordon's product development experience includes 4 bit, 8 bit and 16 bit micro-controller products, x86 platform chipsets and PowerWise® Power Management products. Gordon has lectured on low power design at universities. Gordon actively participates in the Mobile Industry Processor Interface Alliance (MIPI), as a working group chair. He has 5 U.S. patents. Gordon received a BSEE degree from the University of Utah in 1982.

Niel Viljoen, CEO, Netronome
Niel Viljoen has been active in the computing and networking equipment industry for the past 20 years. Primary areas of focus include IP, ATM, security and system design. Before becoming involved with Netronome Systems on a full-time basis in July 2003, Niel was an active business angel, investing in, amongst others, Nujira, Intune and Azuro. He serves on the board of Nujira.
Between 2000 and 2001, Niel was CTO of the Marconi group. Niel joined Marconi after the acquisition of FORE Systems, where he was part of the management team. At FORE, Niel's roles included Senior VP & GM of the Service Provider Division, Senior VP Product Marketing, VP Engineering, Senior Director and GM of the Adapter group. Niel joined FORE through the acquisition of Nemesys Ltd, where he was the CEO. Nemesys developed a range of video encoding devices for broadband networks. Prior to that, Niel developed and created a number of businesses, developing products like network security devices and large distributed memory processor complexes.
Niel has received a number of industry awards. He attended the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa and Cambridge University in the UK.

Michael Mamaghani, Director Marketing, Qualcomm
Michael Mamaghani is the Director of Marketing and Business Development for Qualcomm Flarion Technologies. He has extensive experience in the wireless industry and has a deep understanding of the wireless business landscape. During his eleven years with Qualcomm, he has lead several marketing and engineering initiatives. Mr. Mamaghani currently manages the marketing and business development activities for femtocells products. Prior to his current role, Mr. Mamaghani was responsible for business development relating to LTE access points, UMTS technical marketing, GSM/1X business development and CDMA2000 1X technical marketing. His initial responsibility upon joining Qualcomm was to manage Qualcomm’s North American RF engineering design and deployment. Prior to joining Qualcomm, he managed design and deployment of Cingular’s GSM network in San Francisco Bay Area. Mr. Mamaghani began his career as a product engineer for wireless ASICs at Conexant.
Mr. Mamaghani holds an executive MBA and MS in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles and a BS in electrical engineering from Ohio State University in Columbus.

Tom Hart, Chairman, President & CEO, QuickLogic
E. Thomas Hart has served as our President, Chief Executive Officer and a member of our Board of Directors since June 1994, and as our Chairman since 2001. Prior to joining QuickLogic, Mr. Hart was Vice President and General Manager of the Advanced Networks Division at National Semiconductor Corporation, a semiconductor manufacturing company, where he worked from September 1992 to June 1994. Prior to joining National Semiconductor, Mr. Hart was a private consultant from February 1986 to September 1992 with Hart Weston International, a technology-based management consulting firm. Prior experience includes senior level management responsibilities in semiconductor operations, engineering, sales and marketing with several companies including Motorola, Inc., an electronics provider, and National Semiconductor. Mr. Hart holds a B.S.E.E. degree from the University of Washington.

Kapil Shankar, Founder and CEO, SiliconBlue
Kapil Shankar, founder and CEO of SiliconBlue, has over 20 years experience in semiconductors and programmable logic. At Xilinx, he spearheaded low cost, consumer FPGA Spartan products. At Lattice, Kapil created ISP, in-system programmable CPLDS. He also worked at AMD's programmable logic division. Kapil has 16 patents in programmable logic. He has a MSEE & MSCS from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, NY and has done his BSEE from the Delhi University.

John Tanner, CEO, Tanner EDA
More information to come.

Chris Rowen, Ph.D., Chief Technology Officer, Tensilica
Founder, Chief Technology Officer, member of the board of directors, and Tensilica's first president. He was a pioneer in the development of RISC architecture at Stanford in the early 80s and helped start MIPS Computer Systems Inc. in 1984, where he served as Vice President for Microprocessor Development. Most recently, he was Vice President and General Manager of the Design Reuse Group of Synopsys Incorporated. He received a B.A. in physics from Harvard University and M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

Steve Roddy, VP Marketing, Tensilica
Vice President of Marketing. Steve joined Tensilica in 2000. Prior to Tensilica, he served as Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Amphion Semiconductor. He has also held management positions at Cadence, Synopsys, LSI Logic and AMCC.

Scott Smyser, VP and General Manager, VTI Technologies
Scott Smyser manages the North American operations for VTI Technologies, a leading supplier of MEMS sensors to the automotive, medical, and consumer markets.
Most recently, Scott was a strategy consultant for companies in the semiconductor and electronic component industry, with a focus on companies in the wireless semiconductor and timing device markets. He advised companies in the industry on market, technology, and product direction. His consulting included working with startups developing business strategies, and working with venture capitalists on due diligence. Scott served as an advisor to a MEMS resonator startup, SiTime.
Prior to this, Scott was Director and Principal Analyst for iSuppli, a market research and consulting firm for the electronics industry, focusing on semiconductors and electronic components. There he managed communications and consumer research, in addition to leading the research for wireless technologies. Over a five year period, he built the wireless service into one of the leading market research practices in the industry.
Scott's prior roles include product marketing and sales positions at Epson Toyocom, a top crystal and oscillator supplier, and Tektronix, a test and measurement equipment supplier.
Scott earned a BS in Electrical Engineering and an MBA from the University of Southern California.

Vin Ratford, Senior VP WW Marketing, Xilinx
Vin Ratford is senior vice president of worldwide marketing, with responsibility for enabling sales to drive company revenue and profitability for Xilinx flagship programmable platforms, including silicon, design tools, methodologies, IP, boards and enabling technologies.
Ratford joined Xilinx in 2006 when the company acquired Accelchip, where he served as president and chief executive officer. Ratford became vice president of marketing, business development and silicon architecture for the processing solutions group (PSG) at Xilinx in 2006. In 2007, he was promoted to lead the entire PSG organization, as vice president and general manager. In 2008, he assumed an expanded role as vice president and general manager of the solutions development group (SDG), with responsibility for development and delivery of all Xilinx design tools, methodologies, IP and hardware platforms.
Before AccelChip, Ratford was vice president of marketing and sales at Virage Logic and chief operating officer for the embedded software division of Mentor Graphics. Ratford has held positions in sales, marketing and development at Mentor Graphics, Teradyne, Data General Corp and Raytheon Corp. Ratford holds a BSEE from Northeastern University.