Pulsic Appoints Ken Roberts as CEO
Bristol, UK 29th July 2003 – Pulsic Limited, the physical design tools provider for complex IC designs, today announced the appointment of Ken Roberts as CEO. His appointment rounds out Pulsic’s management team, bringing an executive with extensive commercial, managerial and industry expertise on board. Founder and acting CEO, Mark Williams, will move into the role of COO.
Ken joins Pulsic with significant experience in EDA having worked with many of the leading firms in the industry, most recently at Magma Design Automation, Inc. where he was Vice President and General Manager Europe, responsible for sales, support, marketing, finance and administration, as well as Managing Director of subsidiaries in France, Germany, Israel and the UK.
When asked what attracted him to Pulsic, Ken responded that it was a combination of the firm’s unique product focus and positioning. “Pulsic has an outstanding development team and first-class technology, which has already been well proven on customer designs. Pulsic’s shape-based solutions effectively address the design problems which continue to grow in importance as ICs get more complex and geometries continue to shrink,” said Ken Roberts, CEO, Pulsic. “These problems extend to all areas of physical design, and I see this as a great opportunity to help our customers be successful and establish Pulsic as a leader in the EDA industry.”
Pulsic delivers physical design solutions that address the entire spectrum of IC design types: analog, custom, mixed-signal, small digital, chip assembly – and with the launch of the Prelude Physical Design FrameworkT last month – large digital ASIC designs.
Commenting on Ken’s appointment, Mark Williams, COO Pulsic said, “Since January we have secured first-round funding and made two major product announcements. Our customer base is steadily expanding and with well over 100 tape-outs to our credit, Ken joins us at an exciting time. We are now in an ideal position to grow our market presence and deliver Pulsic’s exceptional products to a much wider worldwide customer base. Ken has all the qualities necessary to help us achieve this.”
Prior to Magma, Ken was Director European Operations, Quickturn Design Systems, a firm that pioneered the development of hardware emulation for the verification of complex digital ASICs. He was responsible for operations in Western Europe including sales and technical staff in UK, France and Benelux. He also worked at Cadence Design Systems as Business Development & Operations Director, participating its rapid growth to become the first EDA company to achieve revenues in excess of $1billion. Previous experience includes Daisy Systems and Marconi Space and Defence. He holds a M.Sc in Microelectronics from Southampton & Brunel Universities, a diploma in Microprocessor Design from Bristol University and a B.Sc in Physics from Manchester University.
“We were delighted to attract Ken to Pulsic. He has an incredible amount of experience in the industry and has already hit the ground running. He clearly has the talent and experience to take Pulsic to the next level,” said Neil Rimer, General Partner at Index Ventures, who provided Pulsic’s first-round funding earlier this year, in conjunction with Prime Technology Ventures.