Synfora Forms 'Dream Team' Technical Advisory Board

Business Wire, Sept 7, 2005

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Synfora introduced the members of its newly formed Technical Advisory Board (TAB): Dr. Edward H. Frank of Broadcom (Nasdaq: BRCM); Dr. Wen-mei W. Hwu of the University of Illinois; and Dr. Sharad Malik of Princeton University. The TAB will provide technical direction based on state-of-the-art research and state-of-the-art SoC design. This is critical as Synfora is pushing the bounds of application synthesis to build complex hardware from un-timed, sequential C algorithms.

Dr. Vinod Kathail, Synfora's CTO said, "We are pleased to be able to tap into the experience of these academic and industrial luminaries. Understanding leading-edge user requirements and where current research is going will be critical to us being able to offer the best solution to the design community."

"I'm pleased to advise Synfora through the TAB," said Dr. Frank, vice-president of Research and Development at Broadcom. "The ever-increasing complexity of chip designs has created a compelling need for higher level tools."

Said Dr. Hwu, Sanders-AMD Endowed Chair Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, "Higher-level synthesis has been a major research topic for many years. There are great opportunities for this field to benefit from advanced compilation techniques in the coming decade. I'm delighted to provide input and guidance to a company that is at the forefront of this innovation."

"PICO technology has a solid foundation, and creating efficient hardware from a sequential, un-timed algorithm is going to be critical as design complexity increases and time to market demands remain constant or increase," said Dr. Malik, Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. "I'm pleased to contribute as an advisory board member to Synfora's plans for the future."

Synfora president and CEO, Simon Napper, said, "We have a vision of enabling designers to rapidly create complex hardware using a sequential programming model. PICO technology is based on world-class research and technology development. The addition of such a high-powered TAB will empower us to further focus on developments that address complex industry needs such as low cost, lowest power, and highest performance."

About Dr. Edward H. Frank

Edward H. Frank, Ph.D., is the vice-president of Research and Development at Broadcom. Dr. Frank is responsible for ensuring that Broadcom's engineering teams use state-of-the-art architectures and development methodologies. He works closely with the company's business units in creating product strategies and roadmaps, and in communicating Broadcom's technical and product vision to its customers. Among his significant contributions to Broadcom is his leadership in the development of the company's 802.11 products.

Dr. Frank joined Broadcom as senior director of engineering of Home and Wireless Networking in May 1999, following Broadcom's acquisition of Epigram, Inc., of which he was a co-founder and where he was vice-president of Research and Development from 1996 to 1999. From 1993 to 1996, Dr. Frank was vice-president of engineering for computer workstation maker NeTpower, Inc., which he co-founded. From 1988 to 1993, he was a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems, Inc., where he co-architected several generations of Sun SPARCstations and was a principal member of Sun's Green Project, which developed the precursor to the Java cross-platform web programming language.

Dr. Frank received a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Frank is a named inventor in 37 U.S. patents and is a Trustee of Carnegie Mellon University.

About Dr. Wen-mei W. Hwu

Dr. Wen-mei W. Hwu is the Sanders-AMD-Endowed Chair Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interest is the architecture, implementation, and software for high-performance computer systems. Dr. Hwu is the director of the University's IMPACT lab, which, since 1987, has delivered new compiler and computer architecture technologies to the computer industry.

For his contributions to the areas of compiler optimization and computer architecture, he received the Eta Kappa Nu Outstanding Young Electrical Engineer Award; the Xerox Award for Faculty Research; the University Scholar Award of the University of Illinois; the Eta Kappa Nu Holmes MacDonald Outstanding Teaching Award; the ACM-Sig-Arch Maurice Wilkes Award; the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award; and the Tau Beta Pi Daniel C. Drucker Eminent Faculty Award.

Dr. Hwu is a Fellow of the IEEE and the ACM. He serves on the Executive Committee of the MARCO/DCARPA C2S2 and GSRC Focus Research Centers, and on the GELATO Strategy Council. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

About Dr. Sharad Malik

Dr. Malik is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University. His research spans all aspects of electronic design automation (EDA), with a current focus on synthesis and verification of digital systems and embedded computer systems.