Management Team
John Lofton Holt
Founder, Chairman and CEO
John Lofton Holt has worked as a successful consultant and entrepreneur for over 10 years, and has worked in the field of Electrical Engineering for over 15 years. Before co-founding Achronix Semiconductor in 2004 Mr. Holt led his company, Integrated Strategies Group (Formerly Saber Security Solutions), a management technology and venture consulting firm in Washington DC. Under Mr. Holt's leadership, the firm built a multi-million dollar business with Fortune 100 and startup clients in the financial services, manufacturing, aerospace, semiconductor, telecommunications, and pharmaceutical industries. Prior to co-founding Achronix Semiconductor, Mr. Holt was a manager of several strategy and technology consulting practices at PricewaterhouseCoopers and Booz Allen Hamilton that advised Fortune 100 companies as well as startups on their execution strategy and technology investments. Mr. Holt started his career at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in 1989 and worked as a design engineer until 1997, focusing on the design, integration, and testing of LIDAR-based flight instruments for remote sensing applications. Mr. Holt is educated as an Electrical Engineer and Physicist with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University and a Masters of Science in Electrical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.
John Lofton Holt
Howard S. Brodsky
Vice President of Business Operations and CFO
Howard Brodsky is the Vice President of Business Operations and CFO at Achronix Semiconductor Corporation and has more than 25 years of business and financial experience including nearly 20 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. Most recently he was the Vice President of Finance & CFO at ChipX, Inc., formerly Chip Express Corporation where he was responsible for all financial, IT and business operations. Prior to joining ChipX, Inc. he was Corporate Controller for C-Cube Microsystems Incorporated, where he served as a member of the management team responsible for C-Cube’s initial public offering (IPO). Mr. Brodsky has also held various controller and financial management positions at Loral Incorporated, Schlumberger Ltd. and Gould Incorporated. Mr. Brodsky received his B.S. in Accounting from West Virginia University and his M.B.A. degree from Lake Erie College of Ohio. He is a member of the Financial Executive Institute and the Institute of Management Accountants.
Howard s. Brodsky
Paul Indaco
Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales
Paul Indaco is the Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales at Achronix Semiconductor Corporation and has more than 25 years of sales and marketing experience in electronics and semiconductors including the FPGA, structured ASIC, ASIC and microprocessor industries. Prior to joining Achronix, Mr. Indaco was the Vice President of Worldwide Sales at Actel, where he managed a team of over 70 sales and field applications engineers and drove over $1.4B in FPGA sales from 1999 to 2006. Mr. Indaco also held the position of Vice President of worldwide sales at Chip Express and Redwood Microsystems as well as Area sales director for LSI Logic Corporation. Prior to his career at LSI Logic, Mr. Indaco has also held product marketing and engineering positions at Intel Corporation and Texas Instruments. Mr. Indaco has earned an MBA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York; an MSEE from the University of Rochester, New York; and a BSEE from Anahuac University, Mexico City.
Paul Indaco
Dr. Rajit Manohar
Founder and CTO
As an internationally recognized pioneer in asynchronous semiconductor design and implementation, Rajit Manohar has spent over ten years working in the field of asynchronous VLSI. Prior to founding Achronix as the CTO, Dr. Manohar was an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University. He was the recipient of an NSF CAREER award as well as numerous teaching awards at Cornell. He was one of the principal designers of MiniMIPS, the first high-performance asynchronous microprocessor. While at Cornell, Dr. Manohar’s group successfully demonstrated several asynchronous VLSI systems in Silicon, including the first microprocessor for sensor networks, an event-based asynchronous chip-multiprocessor, and a pipeline-configurable asynchronous FPGA. He holds numerous patents and is widely published in the area of asynchronous design. Dr. Manohar has received numerous awards, but most recently was selected by MIT’s Technology Review magazine as one of the world’s “Top Innovators Under 35 in Science and Engineering”. Dr. Manohar received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the California Institute of Technology.
Dr. Rajit Manohar
Yousef Khalilollahi
Vice President of Marketing
Yousef Khalilollahi is the Vice President of Marketing at Achronix Semiconductor Corporation. He joined Achronix with 16 years of experience in the FPGA, structured ASIC, and ASIC markets. Prior to joining Achronix, Mr. Khalilollahi was a Marketing Director at LSI Logic custom solutions group where he was responsible for LSI Logic's structured ASIC solutions. He also held director level responsibilities in marketing and business development at Actel Corporation where he managed product strategy and introductions, and drove business success for Actel FPGAs. Prior to marketing and business responsibilities, Mr. Khalilollahi managed the Applications Engineering team at Actel Corporation. Mr. Khalilollahi holds a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Southern California.
Yousef Khalilollahi
Dr Kamal Chaudhary
Vice President of Software Engineering
Recognized as an industry veteran and renowned in the field of FPGA architecture and EDA software, Dr. Chaudhary is the Vice President of Software Engineering at Achronix Semiconductor. He has over 14 years of experience in the programmable logic field and holds more than 24 patents in various areas of FPGA hardware, architecture, testing, and software algorithms including placement, mapping and synthesis. Prior to joining Achronix, Dr. Chaudhary was a Distinguished Engineer at Xilinx. During his tenure he held numerous R&D positions and played vital roles such as Virtex FPGA Architect and has received numerous awards from Xilinx for his innovation and technical contributions. Before Xilinx he was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in Electronics Research Lab, University of California at Berkeley focused on performance driven placement, compaction, logic synthesis and other FPGA advancements. Dr. Chaudhary holds a Bachelors of Technology in Electrical Engineering and Masters of Technology in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, India. He has a Ph.D in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
Kamal Chaudhary
Dr. Ravi Sunkavalli
Vice President of Hardware Engineering
Ravi Sunkavalli is the Vice President of Hardware Engineering at Achronix Semiconductor Corporation and manages all aspects of the delivery of the multi-Gigahertz Achronix hardware to customers. Dr. Sunkavalli joined Achronix with more than 10 years of experience in semiconductor product design and development in FPGA, microprocessor, and memory industries. Dr. Sunkavalli has proven track record of leading numerous successful product tape-outs during his career. Prior to joining Achronix, Dr. Sunkavalli was Director of IC Design at Velogix responsible for full chip design and implementation in 90nm. Dr. Sunkavalli also held various engineering positions at Virage Logic and AMD in SRAM, flash memory and microprocessor product groups. He holds 25 granted U.S. patents with several more filed and pending. Dr. Sunkavalli received his Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University. He also holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology.
Ravi Sunkavalli
Dr. Clinton W. Kelly, IV
Founder and Vice President of Advanced Research
Clinton W. Kelly, IV is the Vice President of Advanced Research for Achronix Semiconductor Corporation and leads hardware research and development activities at the Company. For the last six years, Dr. Kelly has led numerous research and product development programs related to ultra-low-power asynchronous microprocessors and FPGAs. To date, Dr. Kelly has successfully led a variety of processor and FPGA projects in 180nm and 90nm CMOS. Before founding Achronix, Dr. Kelly designed and implemented an ultra-low-power asynchronous microprocessor called SNAP, which is used in sensor networks. This processor was successfully fabricated in 180nm CMOS and demonstrated orders of magnitude less energy than conventional processors currently used in sensor networks. Dr. Kelly also designed and implemented an asynchronous multiprocessor called the Network on a Chip. Dr. Kelly holds numerous patents and is widely published. Dr. Kelly earned a Ph.D. and an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a B.S. in Computer Science, all from Cornell University.
Dr. Clinton W. Kelly, IV
Dr. Virantha N. Ekanayake
Founder
Virantha N. Ekanayake is one of the original founders of Achronix, but his passion for research led him to the Johns Hopkins University where, until rejoining Achronix in 2006, he served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Dr. Ekanayake's research group focused on Asynchronous VLSI and Architecture. Dr. Ekanayake has numerous publications arising out of his work on high-performance asynchronous pipelined memory systems, and ultra-low-power asynchronous processors optimized for sensor networks. From high-level system specification to back-end custom and semi-custom circuit design, he has been involved in the full design flow for several 180nm and 90nm processors and FPGAs. Outside of academia, Dr. Ekanayake has extensive experience in industry, hailing from Netscape Communications Corporation, Telcordia (formerly Bell Communications Research), and, most recently, Intel Corporation. Prior to earning a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, Dr. Ekanayake graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College with a B.E. in Electrical Engineering, and received a Masters of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University.
Dr. Virantha N. Ekanayake