Tak Shigihara: CEO and Founder
Tak Shigihara has over 30 years of experience in the Silicon Valley and is a disciplined multinational executive with proven accomplishment in high technology mid-size to startup companies. His experience includes 8 years of Software & Firmware engineering at Intersil and ROLM where he experienced his 1st IPO. Tak, as a Director of Business Development, was a founding member of Nexgen which was acquired by AMD after going IPO. He started the Asia Pacific division as a Director of Teknekron Communication Systems (TCSI) and greatly contributed to its IPO in 1991. During his time there, he was promoted to VP and then Sr. VP. His results brought in more than half of its revenue by licensing its innovative technologies, providing NRE development and partnering with prestigious large Asian corporations. He co-founded Wireless Access, which merged with Glenayre, also co-founded SiRF and ZSP which merged with LSI Logic and then VeriSilicon. Tak has effectively combined undergraduate and graduate degrees both in Japan and in the United States, culminating in hands-on success in the highly competitive software, telecommunications and semiconductor industries.
Satish Padmanabhan: CTO and Founder
Satish Padmanabhan has over 18 years of experience taking cutting edge technology from conceptual ideas to working SOCs. All the products worked in the first pass. Prior to Algotochip, Satish has worked in various Engineering and Management positions in ZSP, LSI Logic, Riverstone and Lucent. As a cofounding chief Architect at ZSP, he created the first Superscalar and the fastest DSP in the world. Satish named the DSP "Zillion Signal Processor (ZSP)", which is even now one of the most widely licensed DSP processors in the world. Satish managed ZSP India for development of firmware to run on ZSP's family of processors, developed multiple application platforms like VOIP and wireless base stations, and worked with all the tool vendors to develop the user-friendly developmental tools like compilers and RTOS for application code development. He was also responsible for documenting all the ZSP/LSI architecture and user manual, which is still used as the reference guide now after 16 years. Satish was the Chief Architect of 10Gigabit Ethernet and 10Gigabit SONET products at Riverstone Networks and Lucent Technologies. These chips are used in the Metro Edge network by leading customers around the world. These products were the industry's first to support complete virtual concatenation in an OC-192 link. Satish received his M.S. in Digital Signal Processing under Professor Allen Gersho from the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Mike Hong: Vice President, Operations and Business Development
Mike Hong brings 30 years of experience in marketing, sales, business development and operations for semiconductor and wireless solution companies. Before Algotochip, Mike was EVP & general manager of wireless solutions' business unit of Arasor, where he grew revenue from $4M to $40M+ in 2 years. Prior to Arasor, he served as VP of operations for Telegent Systems and shipped over 100M+ units of mobile TV tuners in 2 years. Prior to Telegent, Mike served as VP of business development for Infineon Technologies, the world largest wireless semiconductor company, where he ran their China wireless sales and marketing operations. Prior to Infineon Technologies, Mike was COO for Morphics (now part of Infineon), a fabless semiconductor that developed 3G baseband processors. Previous to Morphics, he held executive positions at LSI Logic and ZSP (now part of VeriSilicon). Mike has also held key technical and management positions at OPTi and PMC-Sierra and served as a device physicist for VLSI technology and Fairchild. Mike holds B.S. and M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from San Jose State University.
Didier Boivin: Vice President of Marketing
Didier Boivin, a semiconductor industry veteran, brings to Algotochip more than 25 years of entrepreneurial and multinational company experience with an extensive background in Smartgrid, broadband network, wireless and consumer market segments. Prior to Algotochip, Didier joined Watteco, a french company, as its marketing vice president and then became its President/CEO for 2 years. He also has years of North American executive experience with companies such as Centillium Communications, DSP Group, and Alcatel Microelectronics. In addition, Didier held various marketing and engineering positions at Rockwell Semiconductor Systems in US, TRT (Philips Subsidiary) and Alcatel Telic in France. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the Ecole Centrale d'Electronique in Paris (France) and his Executive M.B.A. from the University of Texas at Dallas (USA).