Austin, Texas, United States
Seasoned semiconductor executive with over 23 years of industry experience in telecommunications, audio and product design. Proven success leading development teams to meet aggressive design goals and schedules. Long history of translating business goals and product requirements into actionable development plans. Strategic thinker who has helped shape product roadmap and company direction through innovation and balancing potential revenue streams with design possibilities. Very strong technical background with expertise in management, planning, staffing and team building. Ability to build and challenge teams to solve problems and get results. Deep understanding of business objectives and the need to foster cross functional teamwork to achieve corporate level goals. Proficient in making decisions on build vs. buy options and focusing resources to maximal effect. Clear and concise communicator with excellent written, verbal and presentation skills. Adept in developing relationships with customers to mitigate issues and determine future needs. Read my blog on Heterogeneous Systems at: https://www.intrinsix.com/blog/author/eric-bass
Managed R&D departments for two business units within a multi-billion dollar semiconductor manufacturing company. These Voice and POE divisions accounted for ~$200 million in annual revenue. Developed product and technology roadmaps supporting revenue growth and cost reduction strategies for demanding mixed signal semiconductor chips. Cost reductions on highest revenue chipset averaged better than 15% annually for over a decade. Tight interaction with corporate executive management to align division's goals with corporate direction. Communicated departmental vision to employees and ensured individual goals were synchronized with company direction. Product lines included audio processing composed of; speech recognition, noise reduction for phone/video systems, echo cancellation, sound classification, DSL/PLC line drivers, SLIC/SLACs, and Power over ethernet PSE and PD chips. Target markets in telecommunication and IOT spaces with key tier 1 customers. Controlled budgets, staffing, and expenses. Kept departments within budget managed capital expenses and invested in new technology as necessary to insure efficient design environment. Guided ~100 employees. Site management. Oversaw new product development, and the adherence to corporate development procedures including rigorous stage gate process and firm commitment to quality. Turned around failing POE business by correcting quality issues and engaging customers. Implemented new design culture involving strict adherence to testing and quality metrics, use of statistical data, continuous improvement and a blameless model of interaction. Shared resources across business units and drove common design practices, tools and methodologies increasing efficiency and flexibility of teams. Monitored programs and made priority calls to resolve contention. Significant oversight of cross-site/international teams with management responsibility in Austin, California, Tel-Aviv, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ottawa.
Managed R&D for the Voice business units within a multi-billion dollar semiconductor manufacturing company. Voice division accounted for ~$130 million annual revenue. Developed product and technology roadmaps supporting growth and cost reduction strategies. Controlled budgets, staffing, and expenses. Site management. Oversaw new product development, and the adherence to corporate development procedures including stage gate process and commitment to quality. 30% growth in product shipments over this period. Products included; Voice line circuits, DSL/PLC line drivers, and audio processing DSP with speech recognition. Hands on management style challenged engineers and middle managers. Significant oversight of cross-site/international teams with management responsibility in Austin TX, Reading Pennsylvania, and Ottawa.
Managed small team performing technical and competitive analysis including teardowns, die examination, BOM estimation, and reverse engineering. Wrote reports evaluated viability of our new offerings and suggested new features and approaches for our new products. Visited customers and potential technology partners. Created technology roadmaps.
Managed teams developing specifications and architectures for new products. Lead systems team to develop next generation high line count SLIC/SLAC chipset. Lead development of 2 test chips for ultra-high performance clock synthesizers which became basis for next generation platform Team members in Austin, Reading PA, Ottawa, and Rotterdam. Drove cross site collaboration and implemented common methodology and standards for performance.
Lead architect, system designer, and program manager for new generation/architecture SLIC/SLAC voice chipset. Wrote specifications and design documents. Created full system Matlab/Simulink model. Developed innovative highly integrated modelling/design flow which tied to both digital and analog design in Cadence. Worked closely with operations department to cost reduce the chip-set, reducing test time and redesigning to save silicon area. Ultimate product family sold over 1.5 billion units over 14 years and still accounts for $100M annual revenue being one of biggest revenue products in Microsemi. Lead Architect for WiFi phone host processing chip. Wrote specs and design documents, created models and test cases. Built test board and wrote application software.
Analog ASIC design. Designed PLL, op-amps, comparators, oscillators, track and hold, control systems, and fully differential digital circuits in 6 Ghz bipolar process. Designed automatic gain equalization and automatic phase delay equalizer for RGB video signals transmitted on CAT-5 cable. Designed bi-directional 12/24 Mhz digital link for 0-700ft of CAT-5 cable. Designed analog circuitry to transmit stereo audio within a video signal. Debugged custom Intel 810e chipset motherboard. Wrote AHDL code for Altera FPGA. Performed analog video and audio, pcb layout, and power supply design for RDT product. Designed a delta-sigma modulator for digital data transmission. Developed architecture for next generation product.