Achronix Semiconductor Corporation

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.

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.

James Mulligan

Vice President of Worldwide Sales

James Mulligan is the Vice President of Worldwide Sales at Achronix Semiconductor and has more than 25 years of business experience in the Semiconductor Industry. Most recently Mr. Mulligan was the Sr. Director of OEM Sales for the Americas at Xilinx where he was responsible for managing all field sales and technical resources in the Americas. Prior to the OEM Sales responsibilities in the Americas Mr. Mulligan was the Sr. Director for Global Channel Operations at Xilinx managing the worldwide distribution sales activities. Mr. Mulligan also has held various executive management responsibilities at Altera and Advanced Micro Devices. Mr. Mulligan has a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from Lowell Technological Institute.

Yousef Khalilollahi

Vice President of Marketing

Yousef Khalilollahi is the Vice President of Marketing at Achronix Semiconductor Corporation. He has over 20 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 FPGA products strategy and introductions, and drove business success for Actel. 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.

Dr. Virantha N. Ekanayake

Founder and CTO

Virantha N. Ekanayake is one of the original founders of Achronix and has been developing multi-GHz custom and reprogrammable asynchronous logic for nearly a decade. Prior to Achronix he held positions at Netscape Communications Corporation, Telcordia (formerly Bell Communications Research), and Intel Corporation. More recently, Dr. Ekanayake was an Assistant Professor in the Department of ECE at Johns Hopkins University where he headed the Asynchronous VLSI and Architecture group before coming to Achronix in 2006. He 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. Dr. Ekanayake holds a B.A and B.E. in Electrical Engineering from Dartmouth College, as well as an M.S. and Ph.D. from Cornell University in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Dr. Rajit Manohar

Founder and Chief Scientist

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. 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.

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.

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.