Posts Tagged ‘Kathryn Kranen’
Thursday, September 7th, 2017
John Kibarian has been involved with PDF Solutions since co-founding the company in 1991 in Pittsburgh, through its relocation to California in 1996, through the IPO in 2001, and on into today. He’s been CEO since 2000. PDF Co-founder Kimon Michaels has also been with the company since the beginning, and currently serves as VP of Products and Solutions.
As well, CMU Professor Andrzej Strojwas [2016 Phil Kaufman Award recipient] has been PDF’s Chief Technical Advisor from the beginning — not surprising considering he served as Kibarian’s PhD thesis adviser at CMU — and Lucio Lanza has been on the board of directors for 20 years, serving as Chairman since 2004.
PDF is a company that defines stability, steady growth, and an intellectually rigorous and serious-minded approach to solving problems. It’s not a company of self-promoters or grand-standers. It’s a company of highly accomplished technologists, deeply involved in one of the toughest jobs in semiconductors: Finding out why chip yields are good, bad or ugly, and figuring out how that data might be used to improve design and manufacturing.
The last time I interviewed John Kibarian, it was 2015 and PDF Solutions had just acquired Syntricity a company with yield-improvement technology and services for the IC process life cycle.
This time when Kibarian and I spoke, PDF had just acquired several assets of Kinesys Software, including its ALPS (Assembly Line Production Supervisor) software, “designed to enable complete manufacturing traceability, including individual devices and substrates, through the entire assembly and packaging processes” – capabilities which PDF plans to integrate with their Exensio big data analytics platform.
(more…)
Tags: Andrzej Strojwas, Coventor, Design for Inspection, EDAC, ESD Alliance, John Kibarian, Kathryn Kranen, Kimon Michaels, Kinesys Software, LAM, Lucio Lanza, Moore's Law, PDF Solutions
No Comments »
Thursday, October 13th, 2016
Congrats to the ESD Alliance for continuing to attend to myriad legal issues that surround the business of technology. On Tuesday, November 1st, the organization is hosting an evening panel on the Cadence campus entitled “Legal Steps to Maximize Your Exit Value.”
Vital topics slated for discussion include setting the proper price for intangible assets – in-house IP, strategic partnerships, and good will – and more prosaic issues such as the appropriate legal structures and pre-deal tax planning needed to help facilitate the acquisition. Most importantly, panel organizers are also promising you’ll learn “how to avoid giving it all back to your buyer later”.
Which is where our EDA M&A Hall of Fame comes in. There’s just no way this ESD Alliance panel can carry any weight with a battle-hardened EDA audience without the likes of Sanjay Srivastava, Rajeev Madhavan, Chris Rowen, and Kathryn Kranen sitting up at the front of the room.
(more…)
Tags: Cadence, Chris Rowen, Denali, Dennis Fernandez, ESD Alliance, Fudderman Dupree, Jasper Design Automation, Kathryn Kranen, Magma, Mark White, Neil Shroff, Orion Capital, Rajeev Madhavan, Sanjay Srivastava, Silvaco, Synopsys, Tensilica, Tom Maier, Warren Savage, White Summers Caffee & James
2 Comments »
Wednesday, October 8th, 2014
Exhibiting that unique combo of energy, hubris, and eloquence that’s the hallmark of Silicon Valley CEOs everywhere, Kathryn Kranen bid adieu to the EDA industry tonight. Sitting on the Cadence stage in conversation with Vista Ventures’ Jim Hogan – an event billed as part of EDAC’s ongoing Emerging Companies Series – Kranen walked the audience through highlights of her career, with special emphasis on the last 11 years serving as CEO at Jasper, a company she sold to Cadence earlier this year for a reported price of $174 million.
Up until the end of the evening, the exchange between these seasoned veterans of EDA proceeded as advertised – full of pithy advice on starting up startups, as well as enthusiastic endorsements of opportunities in the industry and good-natured banter between two highly successful people who know what it takes to grow and sell a company in high-tech. In the end, however, the evening turned out to be far, far more. It turned out to be Kathryn Kranen’s swan song in EDA.
Toward the end of her 90-minute interview with Hogan, things went historic when Kranen offered not only that she’s leaving Cadence just 4 months after the Jasper acquisition, but she’s leaving EDA completely. According to Kranen, she wants to serve at a company in the size range of Jasper, 100 to 150 employees, but enterprises of that scale are almost impossible to assemble these days in EDA. Since she wants to lead a moderately-sized company, but those options are not available here, she’s looking instead for opportunities outside the industry.
(more…)
Tags: Cadence, EDA, EDAC, Jasper Design Automation, Jim Hogan, Kathryn Kranen, Lucio Lanza, Mike Schuh, Oz Levia
2 Comments »
Thursday, October 2nd, 2014
The conversation will be historic on the evening of Wednesday, October 8th, when Cadence Design Systems hosts the next installment of EDAC’s Emerging Companies Series.
The conversation will be historic, because it will include the past history of Cadence interviewing the present and future history of Cadence; Jim Hogan was a Senior Vice President at the company in the 1990’s, and Kathryn Kranen is a Corporate Vice President and General Manager at the company today. What these two don’t know about Cadence, its past, present, and future – or the entire EDA industry for that matter – is truly not worth knowing.
And beyond these credentials, there’s the fact that both Kranen and Hogan could easily fill the 90 minutes of the session individually. They’re both great public speakers, and both own a plethora of insights about innovation, high-tech enterprise, Silicon Valley, raising and spending venture capital, the art and science of mergers and acquisitions, and taking companies public. These two epitomize the intelligence and instincts that create success in The Valley, with particular gifts of leadership in the EDA industry.
(more…)
Tags: Cadence, EDA, EDAC, Emerging Companies Series, Jim Hogan, Kathryn Kranen
No Comments »
Monday, April 21st, 2014
In the moments prior to Cadence’s quarterly earnings call this afternoon, the company released news of the acquisition of Jasper Design Automation for $170 million, less $24 million in cash, and a small tremor rippled out across the EDA Nation.
Paraphrasing Cadence CEO Lip-Bu Tan in the early minutes of his 5pm ET earnings call: We are very pleased to announce a definitive agreement to acquire Jasper Design Automation. This will help us to further meet our customers’ needs for more advanced verification solutions, particularly today as verification now represents 70% of the cost of SoC development. Together, Cadence and Jasper can move forward, offering the strong formal verification solutions leading customers need. In addition, Cadence is also very pleased to be bringing on board the strong team at Jasper, a team with excellent real-world experience.
All good stuff, yes? So why any tremors in our beloved little EDA Nation?
(more…)
Tags: Aart de Geus, BDA, Cadence, Coverity, EDAC, formal verification, Forte, Innovation, Jasper Design Automation, Kathryn Kranen, Lip-bu Tan, M&A in EDA, Mentor Graphics, Oasys, Synopsys, Wally Rhines
1 Comment »
Thursday, December 12th, 2013
At a recent tech conference in Silicon Valley, I had a chat with a long-time EDA player; let’s call him Elmer. The conversation came around to Jasper Design Automation and conjectures as to what’s ahead for the company. I recounted a small compare and contrast.
At the 2008 February EDAC CEO Forecast Panel, Jasper CEO Kathryn Kranen was on stage along with Synopsys CEO Aart de Geus, Mentor CEO Wally Rhines, and then-Cadence CEO Mike Fister. During the panel discussion, Kranen criticized the Big EDA companies on the panel for their ‘all you can eat’ business strategies – the big companies providing less-than-best-in-class point tools for free to customers who purchased their anchor products, which Kranen said made it nearly impossible for the smaller companies to compete.
(more…)
Tags: EDAC, Jasper Design Automation, Kathryn Kranen, Lucio Lanza
2 Comments »
Thursday, December 12th, 2013
Last week, I had a chance to interview the founder of Career Girls, a YouTube channel chock-a-block with 220+ video interviews of successful women talking about how they got started in their careers, what educational background they needed for those careers, and what features and/or people in their lives helped to bring them to where they are today.
All good stuff, but then this week Mary Barra was named CEO of GM – yeah, yeah, you’ve already heard – the first woman CEO of a major American automobile manufacturer. Outgoing CEO Dan Akerson is quoted as saying, “Mary was not picked because of her gender or political correctness, [but because] Mary’s one of the most gifted executives I’ve met in my career.”
So, it’s a meritocracy after all? If that’s the case here in 2013, do we actually still need something like CareerGirls.org to encourage our daughters to be all they can be? Well, despite Detroit’s Mary Barra, and the likes of Meg Whitman, Marissa Meyer, and Sheryl Sandberg here in Silicon Valley, there are still, according to some studies, very few women anywhere near to the top in big business. And we need look no farther than EDA to prove it … again.
(more…)
Tags: Cadence, CareerGirls.org, Dan Akerman, GM, Jasper Design Automation, Kathryn Kranen, Linda Calhoun, Mary Barra, Mentor Graphics, meritocracy, Synopsys
1 Comment »
Thursday, October 10th, 2013
Given that history and innovation are being featured here in this space this week, it’s only appropriate to highlight the fact that EDAC is hosting a very interesting event related to history and innovation in Silicon Valley next week.
On Wednesday, October 16th, those who have made massive contributions to the EDA industry will be highlighted and celebrated at a black-tie optional dinner at the Computer History Museum. If you’re interested in rubbing elbows with the powerful and prolific, you should be going to this event. If you want a chance to bid at auction for lunch with today’s corporate leaders in EDA, you should be going to this event. If you think said corporate leaders make enough money to pay for your lunch, rather than vice versa, you should still be going to this event.
(more…)
Tags: Aart de Geus, Alan Naumann, Bernie Aronson, Bob Brayton, Bob Gardner, Chenming Hu, Cooley, Dave Burow, Dave Millman, Dean Drako, Ed Cheng, Ernie Kuh, Jack Harding, Jacques Benkoski, Jim Hogan, Jim Solomon, Joe Costello, John Eurich, John Kibarian, John Sanguinetti, Kathryn Kranen, Lip-bu Tan, Penny Herscher, Randy Bryant, Raul Composano, Ravi Subramanian, Rick Carlson, Sanjay Srivastava, Scott Sandler, Simon Segars, Soha Hassoun, Wally Rhines
No Comments »
Wednesday, August 7th, 2013
Well, it looks like the industry has done it again, delivering good growth over a recent quarter. The Press Release issued by EDAC’s Market Statistics Service on August 6th detailed the numbers for Q1_2013: 8.1% growth overall, including 23.8% growth in Services, 20.2% growth in IP, and (a bit less glam) 2.4% growth in EDA. Interesting.
Meanwhile, Dr. Wally Rhines continues to contribute to the industry by making himself available for conversation about the MSS numbers as they are released each period, clarifying as always that his comments are on behalf of EDAC and do not reflect his role as CEO of Mentor Graphics. When I spoke by phone with Rhines earlier this week, I asked him if we can anticipate industry results for all of 2013 by looking at the Q1 numbers.
He said no, EDAC numbers do not portend the future, they only aggregate the results from the past. To know more about the future of the industry, Rhines referred me to the four visionary keynotes given at DAC by Synopsys’ Aart de Geus, Cadence’s Lip-Bu Tan, Jasper’s Kathryn Kranen and Rhines’ own talk.
(more…)
Tags: Aart de Geus, ARM, Cadence, DAC 2013, EDAC, Jasper Design Automation, Kathryn Kranen, Lip-bu Tan, Mentor Graphics, MSS, Synopsys, Wally Rhines
No Comments »
Wednesday, June 5th, 2013
The last day of the Exhibit Hall portion of DAC always arrives with a certain sensibility. Over the course of the 3 days, the place has become something between Our Town and a small college campus, and now with graduation it’s not clear when everyone will be together again. Yet the next phase of life beckons with all of its possibilities and trepidations, and people have to move on.
Happily this afternoon, as the 50th instantiation of DAC drew to a close in Austin, many residents of Our Town EDA could look forward to continuing the camaraderie at a first-ever DAC Banquet this evening at the nearby Four Seasons Hotel. Many of us were en route home by that time by plane, train or automobile and could not be there, but I hear tell it was a great evening. So my Top 10 on Day 3 in Austin starts with this late night report regarding the banquet thanks to ARM’s Tiffany Sparks, who was in attendance at the event.
(more…)
Tags: Analog System Design, Bagpipes, Bill Joyner, Brett Cline, Cadence, Carlo Tinella, CAST, Chris Rowen, DAC, Design Automation Conference, DOCEA, Flexras, Forte, Garrison Hefter, Gene Matter, Gunnar Scholl, Hal Barbour, Hayder Mrbet, Jasper, Kathryn Kranen, Landon Hegedus, Leon Stok, Niteka Raina, Our Town, Pat Pistilli, ProDesign, Rick Perry, Rob Rutenbar, Tensilica, Tiffany Sparks
No Comments »
|
