Management

Robert Blake

President and Chief Executive Officer

Robert Blake has worked in the semiconductor industry for over 25 years. Prior to Achronix Semiconductor he was the Chief Executive Officer of Octasic Semiconductor based in Montreal, Canada. Mr. Blake worked at Altera in a variety of sales, marketing and general management roles. As Vice President of Product Planning he was responsible for defining Altera’s programmable logic product solutions. He has been developing ASIC and programmable logic for high speed telecom and network applications for over 17 years. Prior to Altera, he worked at LSI Logic and Fairchild where he developed ASIC technology. He holds a MEng. in Business and Microelectronics and BSc. in Applied Physics & Electronics from the University of Durham in England.

 

John Lofton Holt

Founder, Chairman of the Board of Directors

From 2004 to 2011, Mr Holt served as Chairman & CEO of Achronix. In this role, Mr. Holt raised over $120M at Achronix and led the company from its first business plan to the launch of the world’s highest performance FPGA product in 2008. From 2008 to 2011 Mr. Holt scaled the team and drove a historic partnership with Intel Corporation to build the world’s most advanced FPGAs in Intel’s 22nm process. In 2011, Mr. Holt brought Robert Blake onto the Achronix team as the CEO. In his current role as Chairman of the Board, Mr. Holt leads business development activities for the company and drives a variety of global strategic initiatives. Before co-founding Achronix Semiconductor, Mr. Holt founded and led S3, 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. Prior to founding S3, Mr. Holt worked as a management consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers and Booz Allen Hamilton.

Mr. Holt started his career at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in 1989 and worked as a design engineer until 1997. 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. He is a frequent lecturer at Cornell University on a variety of topics including entrepreneurship, management, and technology commercialization.

 

Howard S. Brodsky

Vice President of Business Operations and Chief Finance Officer

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.

 

Steve Mensor

Vice President of Marketing

Steve Mensor is the Vice President of Marketing at Achronix Semiconductor Corporation. He has over 20 years experience in the FPGA industry. Prior to joining Achronix, Mr. Mensor was at Altera where he was Sr. Director of Marketing and led a variety of departments including FPGA Product Marketing, Customer and Channel Marketing, IP Marketing and Strategic Partnerships, and Corporate Marketing. Mr. Mensor holds an MBA from Santa Clara University and a BSEE from UC Santa Barbara.

 

 

 

Dr. Virantha N. Ekanayake

Founder and Chief Technology Officer

Virantha N. Ekanayake has been developing multi-GHz custom and reprogrammable asynchronous logic for over 12 years. Prior to Achronix, 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 joining Achronix full-time in 2006. From high-level system specification to back-end custom and semi-custom circuit design, he has been involved in the reprogrammable fabric design for several FPGAs in advanced nodes ranging from 90nm down to 28nm and 22nm, and has numerous patents and publications in this field. 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. Kamal Choudhary

Vice President of Software Engineering

Recognized as an industry veteran and renowned in the field of FPGA architecture and EDA software, Dr. Choudhary 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. Choudhary 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. Choudhary 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.

 

Rahul Nimaiyar

Vice President of Hardware Engineering

Rahul Nimaiyar is the Vice President of Hardware Engineering at Achronix Semiconductor Corporation. He has over 15 years of experience in architecture, design and implementation of high performance Integrated Circuits and Systems across leading companies and start-ups. Prior to Achronix he was at Velogix Inc., where he played a key role in building its first 90nm FPGA product. Prior to that Rahul built Ultra-Sparc Microprocessor at Sun Microsystems where he made significant contribution to circuit and design methodologies. Rahul has led several successful product developments in 90nm, 65nm, 40nm, & 28nm process nodes. Rahul holds a Bachelors of Technology in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

 

Dr. Clinton W. Kelly, IV

Founder, Vice President of Core Technology

Clinton W. Kelly, IV is a co-founder and the Vice President of Core Technology for Achronix Semiconductor Corporation, where he leads hardware research and development activities. Dr. Kelly has built and led teams that have designed and implemented high-speed, low-power synchronous and asynchronous FPGAs in 180nm, 90nm, 65nm, 40nm, 28nm, and 22nm process technologies. In addition, he has led his teams in the development of hybrid end-to-end full custom design flows to support advanced IC design in 22nm and beyond. Dr. Kelly holds numerous patents and is widely published. He has a B.S. in computer science and an M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from Cornell University.

 

Eric Law

Director of Sales – China

Eric Law has over 23 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. Prior to joining Achronix Semiconductor Corporation, Mr Law has been working in Altera for 13 years as their FAE Director for Asia Pacific, covering China, Taiwan, Korea, India, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. During his tenure in Altera, Mr Law has built a highly effective FAE team in a variety of roles focused on customer relationships, horizontal technologies and system architectures across a range of end-market applications. As a result of this, he has helped growing the business in Asia many folds. Prior to Altera, Mr Law has over 10 years of experience developing ASIC and digital IC for Motorola, Mitsubishi Electric and Mitel Semiconductors in Hong Kong and Canada. Mr Law received his BSc. (Hons) in Electronic Engineering and MSc. in Operational Research from Southampton University in England.