Xpedion Design Systems - Company History

About Xpedion

Xpedion Design Systems is a privately held company headquartered in Milpitas, California providing accurate transistor-level simulation to RFIC and high-frequency designers.

Our GoldenGate RFIC simulator is integrated with standard design flows and uses existing foundry device model libraries. With Xpedion, design engineers now have the fastest and most accurate transistor-level frequency-domain simulation technology available for analysis of analog circuit behavior without the usual constraints upon circuit size, frequency or complexity.

GoldenGate provides foundry and customer proven productivity gains significantly reducing time-to-market where a few months can mean tens of millions in sales. Our cutting-edge technology enables orders of magnitude improvement in simulation performance as well as enabling complex analyses not available from other suppliers.

This resulting reduction in design iterations, silicon spins and mask costs makes this technology a requirement for the successful development of next-generation wireless and high-speed analog designs.

Management

Pete Rodriguez
President and CEO
pete@xpedion.com

Mr. Rodriguez brings 20 years of engineering, sales and senior management experience in the semiconductor and electronics industries to Xpedion. Prior to joining Xpedion, Mr. Rodriguez held senior management positions in sales and marketing at Escalade Corporation up to its acquisition by Mentor Graphics (NASDAQ: MENT). He also held senior sales management positions at LSI Logic as well as product management and process engineering positions at Aerojet Electronics, Teledyne Microwave, and Siliconix. Mr. Rodriguez holds an MBA from Pepperdine University, an MSEE from California Polytechnic University and a BS in chemical engineering from California Institute of Technology.

Paul Pickering
EVP Sales and Marketing
paulp@xpedion.com

Mr. Pickering joins Xpedion with a variety of product experiences in the EDA, ASIC and SOC markets. Previously, Mr. Pickering was the Vice President of Sales Sandcraft Inc. a developer and manufacturer of high end RISC microprocessors. Prior to Sandcraft, Mr. Pickering was Vice President of Sales in Asia for Zeevo Inc., a wireless device company.  He has also held managerial positions at Fairchild Semiconductor and Toshiba, director-level positions at LSI Logic and PMC Sierra, and was the VP of Sales at Lexra and Silicon Access where he helped bring in major design wins in the computer, storage, networking, and consumer product areas. Mr. Pickering received his BA from West Chester University.

Richard Lazansky
EVP Product Development
rick@xpedion.com

Mr. Lazansky brings 20 years of outstanding software development experience in the EDA industry to Xpedion. His background in computer software engineering and technical team management has built breakthrough products for memory systems design, front end IC design, systems and circuit simulation. During his impressive career, he founded or co-founded a number of key technology companies including Vantage, Denali Software and Standard MEMS. He was CEO of Denali and currently chairs its board of directors. Rick began his EDA career with Silvar-Lisco, pioneering the use of hardware description languages. Mr. Lazansky has a MS in Computer Science and Engineering from Stanford University, and a BA in Computer Science and Economics from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Larry Vaughn
Vice President of Finance
larry@xpedion.com

Mr. Vaughn joins Xpedion with 15 years of Controller/VP Finance experience in the semiconductor and EDA industries. Prior to joining Xpedion, Mr. Vaughn was the senior finance executive at Sensys Instruments, recently acquired by Therma-Wave. Mr. Vaughn was also Vice President of Finance at Escalade Corporation up to its acquisition by Mentor Graphics as well as the Corporate Controller for Insync Systems. Mr. Vaughn has extensive experience with privately held technology startups; bringing to Xpedion vast finance, accounting and general business expertise as well as significant merger & acquisition experience. Mr. Vaughn holds an MBA and BS in Business from San Jose State University.

Dr. Jean Rousset
CTO, Xpedion co-founder
jean@xpedion.com

Dr. Rousset has been doing research and development in high frequency simulation for nearly 30 yrs. His initial work was on electromagnetic simulation but has been focused on nonlinear simulation including harmonic balance techniques since 1982 as a reasercher at the Microwave and Optical Communications Institute (IRCOM) in Limoges France. He has conducted a dozen PhD theses and authored more than 40 articles on the topics of RF and microwave circuit simulation, modeling and design. He is co-author of the GoldenGate RFIC simulator and author of the GoldenGate Model Compiler. Dr. Rousset has a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Limoges.

Edouard Ngoya
Chief Scientist, Xpedion co-founder
edouard@xpedion.com

Dr. Ngoya has been doing research and development in RF simulation for 15 yrs. Since 1991, he has been a a senior scientist with the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) at the university of Limoges. Dr. Ngoya is the inventor of key analog simulation and modeling technologies like compressed transient, envelope transient, and dynamic volterra series Prior to founding Xpedion he developed and licensed core simulation technology to several EDA companies. He has conducted a dozen PhD theses and authored more than 50 articles on the topics of RF & microwave circuit simulation, modeling and design. He is co-author of the GoldenGate RFIC simulator. Dr. Ngoya has a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Limoges.

Pete Johnson
Director of Worldwide Marketing
petej@xpedion.com

Mr. Johnson has over 10 years of engineering, sales and marketing experience in the EDA, semiconductor and electronics industries. Previously, Mr. Johnson held various marketing, applications and sales roles at Escalade Corporation up to its acquisition by Mentor Graphics (NASDAQ: MENT). He also held various engineering, marketing and sales roles at LSI Logic. Mr. Johnson received his MBA from the University of Chicago and holds a BSEE from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

George Estep
Director of Worldwide Applications
george@xpedion.com

Mr. Estep brings 15 years of analog and RF design and applications experience to Xpedion. Prior to joining Xpedion, Mr. Estep held applications and applications management positions at CadMOS, Antrim Design Systems and Analogy. He also held positions as Senior Design Engineer for COMSAT. Mr. Estep holds an BSEE from Virginia Tech.

Board of Directors

Special Board Advisor

H. DuBose Montgomery
Co-founder, Managing Director, Menlo Ventures

Mr. Montgomery was a founder of Menlo Ventures in 1976, and has been an active director in many of the firm's portfolio companies. Prior to Menlo Ventures, he worked in communications research for Bell Laboratories, had extensive small business management consulting experience, and did marketing for a small electronics company. At Menlo, Mr. Montgomery focuses on investments in leading companies in the information technology sector. His recent investments include: Branders, Fireclick, Freightquote, Kinzan, Sequence Design, SURx, VBrick Systems, VNUS Medical Technologies, Vocent Solutions and Xpedion Design Systems. His prior investments include: Asyst Technologies (ASYT); EndoVascular Technologies, acquired by Guidant Corp. (GDT); Frame Technology Corporation, acquired by Adobe Systems (ADBE); Gilead Sciences (GILD); Infoseek Corporation, acquired by the Walt Disney Co. (DIG); LSI Logic Corporation (LSI); Micro Therapeutics (MTIX); Network Equipment Technologies (NWK); and Valid Logic Systems, acquired by Cadence Design Systems (CDN).

Mr. Montgomery is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (B.S. in Electrical Engineering, M.S. in Electrical Engineering, B.S. in Management Science) and the Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration (M.B.A.). He has served as a trustee of the Corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on the M.I.T. visiting committees for the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and for sponsored research.

Board Members

Arvind Purushotham
Managing Director, Menlo Ventures

Mr. Purushotham joined Menlo Ventures in 2001. He started his career as a chip designer working on low power versions of the Pentium Processor(r) in the Mobile Group at Intel Corporation. Later he became the Program Manager of the Mobile Pentium II(r) Processor effort and contributed to several successful product launches. His professional career includes brief stints as an investment banking intern at Robertson Stephens and as an associate at the Summit Accelerator Fund. At Menlo, Mr.Purushotham has been involved with the firm's investments in Cavium Networks, Intelligent Results, nCircle Network Security, ProfitLine, VhaYu Technologies, and Xpedion Design Systems.

Mr.Purushotham is a graduate of the Harvard University Graduate School of Business (M.B.A.), Case Western Reserve University (M.S. in Electrical Engineering) and the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering).

James H. Hogan
General Partner, Telos Venture Partners

 Jim has worked in the semiconductor industry for over three decades. His experience includes time as a senior executive in electronic design automation, semiconductor intellectual property, semiconductor equipment, and fabrication companies.

Immediately prior to joining Telos Venture Partners in 2004, Jim was Senior Vice President of Business Development of Artisan Components. Previously, Jim was Senior Vice President of Business Development and the senior member of the Office of Chief Technologist at Cadence Design Systems. Jim was a Cadence Executive Fellow and held several positions at Cadence including President of Cadence Japan, Corporate Vice President of Marketing, and Corporate Vice President for Field Operations. He was also Chief Operating Officer of Smart Machines, Inc., a semiconductor equipment automation company.

Jim also worked for National Semiconductor for 10 years and for Philips. At both companies, he established device physics laboratories globally.

Jim's interest in process and design automation for integrated circuits grew from his experiences between 1972 and 1982 at his family's business, which developed semiconductor-packaging equipment.

Jim holds a B.A degree in mathematics, a B.S. degree in computer science and an M.B.A all from San Jose State University. He serves on the Board of Advisors at San Jose State's School of Engineering.

Yatin Mundkur
Managing Director, Artiman Ventures

Mr. Mundkur is managing director at Artiman Ventures focusing on semiconductors, systems and software investments. Yatin is currently a director of Aarohi Communications, BayPackets, RedClover Networks, Sierra Design, Xambala and Xpedion Design Systems. Previously, Mr. Mundkur was a director of Catamaran Communications (acquired by Infineon, IFX), Lara Networks (acquired by Cypress, CY), Versatile Optical Networks (acquired by Vitesse, VTSS) and a Board Observer to VxTel (acquired by Intel Corporation, INTC). Mr. Mundkur is also responsible for TeleSoft's investments in Ikanos and SigmaTel. Before joining TeleSoft Partners, he was founder and president of Equator Technologies, and his prior experience includes technical and business roles at Conexant, Ross Technology, and architect of SUN's HyperSparc Processor. Mr. Mundkur has a BSEE from MSU of Baroda, India and a MSEE from the University of Texas at Austin.

Pete Rodriguez
President and CEO, Xpedion Design Systems

Mr. Rodriguez brings nearly 20 years of engineering, sales and senior management experience in the semiconductor and electronics industries to Xpedion. Prior to joining Xpedion, Rodriguez held senior management positions in sales and marketing at Escalade Corporation up to its recent acquisition by Mentor Graphics (NASDAQ: MENT). He also held senior sales management positions at LSI Logic as well as product management and process engineering positions at Aerojet Electronics, Teledyne Microwave, and Siliconix.
Mr. Rodriguez holds an MBA from Pepperdine University, an MSEE from California Polytechnic University and a BS in chemical engineering from California Institute of Technology.

Special Board Observers

Arjun Gupta
Chief Executive and SBIC Chairman, TeleSoft Partners

Arjun Gupta is the Founder and Chief Executive of TeleSoft Partners, a venture capital firm focused on high-tech startups. He has over 20 years of experience working with technology companies in venture capital, consulting and design engineering roles. At TeleSoft, Arjun manages capital commitments of $625+ million and has established Corporate Partnerships with Alltel and Bechtel in the US, Deutsche Telekom in Europe and Comverse in Israel.

Over the last decade Arjun has overseen investing in and helping build 50+ private companies, resulting in 20+ acquisitions and IPOs to date with a market value equivalent of ~$13 billion (post bubble). Based on the recent private equity IRR data (disclosed by CalPers, CalSTRS, UTIMCO, University of California, University of Michigan and Washington State) on 590+ private equity funds from 1981-2002, TeleSoft-1 would be the #3 fund by performance.

Arjun serves on the Board of Directors of Aarohi Communications, Calient Networks, CreekPath Systems, Knowledge Adventure, LiteScape, LogLogic, Matrix Semiconductor, Sierra Design Automation, Validity Sensors, VoiceObjects, Xambala and the Red Herring. Arjun also served on the board of Omnipoint as a private company through its IPO (NASDAQ: OMPT) until its acquisition by Voicestream for $10+ billion in 1998 (subsequently Voicestream was acquired by Deutsche Telekom for $50+ billion to form T-Mobile USA). Earlier in his career, Arjun was a Strategy Consultant for high-tech clients with McKinsey & Company, and a Software Engineer with Tektronix, Inc. He is also President of the AVG Foundation, which supports community projects in education, medical research and the arts.

Arjun received an MS and BS in Computer Science from Washington State University and has an MBA from Stanford University. He is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute.

Charlie Huang
General Partner, Telos Venture Partners

Charlie is a 14-year veteran of the electronic design automation industry who has experience as a technologist, manager, entrepreneur, CEO, and senior executive.

Charlie joined Telos Venture Partners in 2004 after serving as Corporate Vice President of Integrated Circuit Solutions Business Development at Cadence Design Systems. At Cadence, Charlie held a variety of responsibilities including strategic marketing, business development, mergers & acquisitions, and foundry relationships.

Before joining Cadence, Charlie co-founded CadMOS Design Technology - a company that provided solutions to noise problems in ultra deep sub-micron processes. Its noise-analysis solutions were targeted at both digital and mixed-signal designers working in microprocessors, DRAMs, mixed-signal SoC, and ASICs. As CEO of CadMOS, Charlie raised venture capital from a variety of investors and managed the company through its acquisition by Cadence in 2001.

In 1990, Charlie joined Epic Design Technology as a senior architect and headed the flagship development of PowerMill and PathMill tools. When Synopsys acquired Epic in 1997, he became Vice President of R&D in the Epic Technology Group.

Charlie holds Bachelor of Science degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from Shanghai Jiao Tong University , and an MSEE and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University . He holds a U.S. patent on piecewise linear event driven simulation.

Principal Investors

Technical Board

Dr. Ken Kundert
Founder, Designer's Guide Consulting

Ken is well renowned for creating two of the most innovative, influential and highest grossing circuit simulators ever produced: Cadence's Spectre and Agilent's harmonic balance simulator. He has a deep understanding of analog/mixed-signal and RF simulation technology and is well versed in its application. He has unique insights in tying together knowledge of circuits, mathematics, modeling and simulation to create circuit specific solutions for design simulation and verification.

From 1989 to 2005, Ken worked at Cadence Design Systems as a Fellow. Ken created Spectre and was the principal architect of the Spectre circuit simulation family. As such, he has led the development of Spectre, SpectreHDL, and SpectreRF. He also played a key role in the development of Cadence's AMS Designer and made substantial contributions to both the Verilog-AMS and VHDL-AMS languages. While in school he authored Sparse , an industry standard sparse linear equation solver and created Agilent's harmonic balance simulator. Before that Ken was a circuit designer at Tektronix and Hewlett-Packard, and contributed to the design of the HP 8510 microwave network analyzer. He has written three books on circuit simulation: The Designer's Guide to Verilog-AMS in 2004, The Designer's Guide to SPICE and Spectre in 1995, and Steady-State Methods for Simulating Analog and Microwave Circuits in 1990; and created The Designer's Guide Community website. He has also authored eleven patents and over two-dozen papers published in refereed conferences and journals.

Ken received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1989, his M.S. degree in 1983 and his B.S. in 1979.

Stephen Lloyd
Vice President of Engineering, Beceem Communications

Stephen Lloyd is currently the VP of Engineering, RF Microelectronics at Beceem Communications, Inc. where he is responsible for all RF Systems, RFIC, and Mixed Signal IC design. With over 19 years experience designing and managing the design of analog and RF integrated circuits at large companies such as Tektronix, Rockwell, Conexant, and Skyworks and several small startups, Steve has held roles from IC Design Engineer through Executive Director of RFIC, and presently is VP of Engineering.

After graduating from UC Berkeley in 1986 with a BS EECS, Steve began his carrier at Tektronix where he designed high speed, high precision analog IC's for instrumentation. In 1990, He moved on to Ashtech where he designed RFIC's for GPS products. In 1994 Steve joined Wireless Access where he designed a very low power two-way pager RFIC. In 1995 He joined Rockwell Semiconductor Systems, which spun off to become Conexant and then later Skyworks Solutions. Steve was primarily responsible for the design of cellular RFIC's. During his tenure he lead the RFIC team and was instrumental in growing the group from the initial 7 employees to over 50 designers in 3 locations while generating over $100M in revenue. Some of the most successful products from his team were a 900MHz and 2.4GHz Cordless Phone chip set which dominated the market, several generations of CDMA RFIC's used by tier 1 cell phone manufacturers, and a highly successful GSM Direct Conversion RFIC family. In 2004, Steve left Skyworks to join Beceem Communications, a recently funded start-up company focused on advanced wireless communications.

Steve served as the IEEE RFIC Symposium Technical Program Chair in 2003 and General Chair in 2004. In addition, He has participated in numerous panels and workshops on RFIC design.

Dr. Vladimir Aparin
Sr. RF Designer, Qualcomm

Vladimir Aparin received the Diploma of Engineer-Physicist degree (with honors) in Automation and Electronics from the Moscow Institute of Electronic Engineering (MIEE), Moscow , Russia , in 1989, and the PhD Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at San Diego in 2005. From 1989 to 1992, he was a part of a GaAs IC design team at MIEE, where he was involved in the design and testing of high-speed analog and digital GaAs integrated circuits (ICs),  in the device modeling and characterization. From 1992 to 1996, Vladimir was employed by Hittite Microwave Corporation in Woburn , MA , where he designed GaAs and Si BiCMOS RF/microwave ICs for wireless communication systems. In 1996, he joined QUALCOMM Inc. in San Diego , CA , where he is currently employed as a principal engineer, leading the design of highly-integrated ICs for cellular phones.

Over the 16 years of his industry experience, Vladimir designed a large variety of RF/microwave and mixed-signal ICs among which are high-linearity low-noise amplifiers, power amplifiers, mixers, VCOs, quarter-step prescalers, active tunable and adaptive filters, high-temperature superconductive tunable filters, variable-gain amplifiers, sample-and-hold circuits. He is well familiar with both GaAs and Si technologies and different circuit simulation tolls including PSPICE, Touchstone, Libra, ADS, SpectreRF, and Golden Gate . Vladimir is known in the industry for his contribution towards development of new linearization and active filtering techniques. He holds 10 patents and has authored and coauthored 30+ papers.

Dr. Asad A. Abidi
Professor of Electrical Engineering, UCLA

Asad A. Abidi received the B.Sc. (with Honors) degree from Imperial College, London, U.K. in 1976, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1978 and 1981, respectively.

He was at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill , NJ , from 1981 to 1984 as a Member of Technical Staff in the Advanced LSI Development Laboratory. Since 1985, he has been with the Electrical Engineering Department of the University of California , Los Angeles , where he is Professor. He was a Visiting Faculty Researcher at Hewlett Packard Laboratories in 1989. His research interests are in CMOS RF design, data high-speed analog integrated circuit design, conversion, and other techniques of analog signal processing.

Dr. Abidi was the Program Secretary for the International Solid-State Circuits Conference from 1984 to 1990, and General Chairman of the Symposium on VLSI Circuits in 1992. He was Secretary of the IEEE Solid-state Circuits Council from 1990 to 1991. From 1992 to 1995, he was Editor of the IEEE Journal of Solid-state Circuits. He has received the 1988 TRW Award for Innovative Teaching and the 1997 IEEE Donald G. Fink Award. He was a corecipient of the Best Paper Award at the 1995 European Solid-state Circuits Conference, the Jack Kilby Best Student Paper Award at the 1996 International Solid-state Circuits Conference (ISSCC), the Jack Raper Award for Outstanding Technology Directions Paper at the 1997 ISSCC, and the Design Contest Award at the 1998 Design Automation Conference.

Dr. Thomas H. Lee
Professor of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

Thomas H. Lee received the S.B., S.M. and Sc.D. degrees in electrical engineering, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983, 1985, and 1990, respectively.

He joined Analog Devices in 1990 where he was primarily engaged in the design of high-speed clock recovery devices. In 1992, he joined Rambus Inc. in Mountain View , CA where he developed high-speed analog circuitry for 500 megabyte/s CMOS DRAMs.

He has also contributed to the development of PLLs in the StrongARM, Alpha and AMD K6/K7/K8 microprocessors. Since 1994, he has been a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University where his research focus has been on gigahertz-speed wireline and wireless integrated circuits built in conventional silicon technologies, particularly CMOS.

He has twice received the "Best Paper" award at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference , co-authored a "Best Student Paper" at ISSCC, was awarded the Best Paper prize at CICC, and is a Packard Foundation Fellowship recipient.

He is an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer of both the Solid-State Circuits and Microwave Societies. He holds 35 U.S. patents and authored The Design of CMOS Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuits (now in its second edition), and Planar Microwave Engineering , both with Cambridge University Press. He is a co-author of four additional books on RF circuit design, and also cofounded Matrix Semiconductor.

Dr. Henry Chang
Founder, Designers Guide Consulting

Henry is an expert in analog/mixed-signal design methodologies, next generation tools and flows, and standards for analog & mixed-signal IP in system-on-a-chip design. During his career he has designed and implemented several analog integrated circuits, written EDA software, developed system-on-a-chip design methodologies, and spent extensive time working with designers to understand their needs both short and long term and to provide solutions.

From 1995 to 2005, Henry worked at Cadence Design Systems, Inc. in research and development, methodology services, product marketing, corporate strategy, and in the office of the Chief Technology Officer. He has also worked at Micro Linear and GE Lighting. He is the author of three books: Winning the SoC Revolution: Experiences in Real Design in 2003, Surviving the SoC Revolution: A Guide to Platform Based Design in 1999, and a Top-Down, Constraint-Driven Design Methodology for Analog Integrated Circuits in 1997. He is on the steering committee of the IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference, serving presently as the conference chairman. He holds 10 US patents, has authored 14 technical papers, and has participated at conferences giving tutorials, sitting on panels, and giving keynote addresses.

Henry received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1994 and 1992 respectively. He received his Sc.B. degree in Electrical Engineering from Brown University in 1989.

Careers at Xpedion

Xpedion offers competitive salaries and benefits such as medical, dental, vision, a 401(k) plan, company-paid life insurance and a pre-tax flex spending account. If you are hard working and have creative ideas, do not let them go to waste!

If you are interested in any of the following positions, please email a cover letter and a resume to info@xpedion.com

QUALITY ASSURANCE MANAGER

Lead an excellent QA team with state of the art expertise for the leading RFIC simulator developer!

Candidate should posess:

A passion for changing the RFIC design world.

Broad experience in QA and design as well as working with developers, customers, and designers.

A minimum of 5 years management experience in quality assurance for Electronic Design Automation software.

Depth of experience in analog and/or RF circuit simulation and simulators, such as Spice, HSIM, ADS, Spectre/Spectre RF and others.

Extensive experience, skill and interest in QA metrics and automation.

Candidate should be knowledgeable in:

Software development practices, standards and tools. Complexity measurement for software, white and black box test paradigms.

RF and Analog design IC design experience.

Communication protocols, test and measurement equipment and processes.

Knowledge of CVS, C/C++, Perl , shell programming, TCL/TK, Purify, Quantify, Valgrind.

NORTH AMERICAN APPLICATIONS ENGINEER

Requires 5 years experience in RF and microwave integrated circuit design. As well as experience with circuit simulation tools and good communication skills.

EUROPEAN APPLICATIONS ENGINEER

Requires 5 years experience in RF and microwave integrated circuit design. As well as experience with circuit simulation tools and good communication skills.

SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Requires Bachelor's degree in Mathematics, Computer Science, Engineering or related discipline plus 5 years experience in integrating RF design tools into a Cadence design environment, working in Unix and PC environments. Experience in SKILL, C/C++ programming languages. In lieu of B.S. + 5 yrs., will accept a Master's degree or a PhD degree in Mathematics, Computer Science, Engineering or related discipline.

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