MANAGEMENT
About Us
• Sergey Khandorin
Sergey has twenty years of experience in digital chip design and verification as well as in project and team management. Most recently, Sergey ran the 60-person chip development services team of Lebedev (IPMCE). The Lebedev team completed digital ASIC and FPGA projects as well as analog projects such as library cell development and support.
Prior to Lebedev, Sergey was a member of Nortel Networks' Moscow ASIC office, where he grew from an engineer to a project lead. The team developed MAC and other cores as well as Vera-based testbenches. Designs included protocols such as Ethernet, ATM, and ATM over MPLS.
Other projects under Sergey’s belt include: image processor design, DSP-system development, International Space Station and Mars-Odyssey Mission processor and monitoring subsystems, and extensive FPGA and emulation work.
Sergey graduated with a Masters Degree from the Physics department of Novosibirsk State University.
• Vlad Kovalev
With over fifteen years of experience in front-end design, back-end design, verification, sign-off, and project management, Vladimir has most recently served as a senior design engineer for Spike Technologies, performing design and verification tasks for the development of graphics and image capture chips.
As a senior design engineer at Intrinsix, SEVA, and Spike Technologies, Vladimir engaged in the development of content addressable memories, peripheral interconnect, memory controllers, and graphics controllers. With a strong focus on design for test, Vladimir has a background in leading testbench architecture and development and has significant experience in hardware emulator evaluation.
While a principal design engineer and project manger at NIITT, Vladimir led the development of various microcontrollers and Intel compatible microprocessors; contributing himself to the design and verification of ALUs, FPUs, and MMUs. Vladimir has most recently worked on DFT implementation for SanDisk.
Advisors
• Mark Indovina
As the Director of Engineering for the Digital IC Design Group of Cadence Design Systems, in less than 4 years Mark built a group of 200 engineers performing contract IC development for companies throughout the world.
Currently Mark is the COO and co-founder of Tenrehte Technologies, which develops hassle-free, plug-and-play Wi-Fi platforms for high-performance, low power applications, such as power management, Smart Grid, and health care.
Mark has an extensive management and engineering background and was most recently Chief Technology Officer and a founder of Vivace Semiconductor, a fabless semiconductor start-up company focused on providing System-On-Chip (SoC) solutions for the growing digital entertainment markets. At Vivace he was responsible for the successful delivery of working silicon prototypes, operating system, DSP algorithms, and runtime software for multiple products. Previously Mark was a founder and Vice President of Engineering for Improv Systems, Inc., a company which develops and licenses intellectual property for digital signal processing including a proprietary DSP architecture, development tools, DSP algorithms, and application software. At Improv he was responsible for securing multiple license agreements and a $9M strategic investment from Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Philips). Prior to joining Improv Systems, Mark was the Director of Engineering for the newly formed Digital IC Design Group of Cadence Design Systems, where in less than 4 years he built a group of over 200 engineers performing over $65M of contract IC design for various companies throughout the world. Before Cadence Design Systems, Mark was a Principle Research Engineer in the Applied Research department of Motorola working on strategic mixed signal semiconductor devices and SoC solutions that paved the way for exciting new wireless, battery powered communications devices. During this time he was also an adjunct professor at Florida Atlantic University where he taught classes in VLSI design, logic design, and computer architecture. Mark was active in obtaining NSF grants for projects assigned to the university, and joint projects partially funded by Motorola. Prior to Motorola, Mark was with Computer Consoles researching and developing various digital signaling processing based sub-systems as part of a novel digital switch architecture. He started his engineering career at Ashly Audio designing various products used in professional sound reinforcement. He is a senior member of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and AES (Audio Engineering Society). Mark is the co-author of an eBook on IC design and has authored and co-authored various technical papers, position papers, trade journal publications, has participated in various standards bodies and committees, and chaired and presented at society and industry forums. He also is a member of the Industrial Advisory Boards for the Electrical Engineering Department and Multidisciplinary Senior Design Program at Rochester Institute of Technology.
Mark earned an AS in Applied Science and his BS and MS in Electrical Engineering and from Rochester Institute of Technology.
Emeriti
• Linc Jepson
Prior to 74ze, Linc served in various design and verification roles as an ASIC engineer. With experience from Cabletron Systems, AuraVision, BroadLogic, Believe, and Transmeta, he has most recently worked as a digital design engineer at Unicore Microsystems, a Chinese-funded Russian microprocessor company. Linc has also held positions in Russia at Lotus (now IBM) and Artel Business and Telecommunications. As an engineer in Silicon Valley, Linc recognized the advantage of coupling the foremost in engineering talent from the heart of the semiconductor world with the highly-skilled, but less expensive expertise of foreign specialists. Long familiar with the technical savvy which put the first person into space and produces one of the highest numbers of engineers per capita*, Linc moved to Eastern Europe to prepare for the offshore movement. With three years of experience in Russian-speaking countries, Linc is the ideal linchpin between the US and Eastern European semiconductor communities.
Linc received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and a B.A. in International Relations from Tufts University.
