Between The Lines

Hi folks, while I was away on vacation, Xilinx prebriefed the press corps about news that EDA veteran Moshe Gavrielov has been appointed the new CEO at Xilinx. Ann Mutschler covered it for us and Ron Wilson blogged on it. First off I’d like to say Congratulations Moshe and Congratulations Xilinx!

It will be interesting to see how Gavrielov transitions from the EDA to the FPGA world and how he tackles heading up a company that is larger than the biggest EDA company. I’m sure a lot of folks are asking why is a guy who has never headed up a semiconductor company and was the CEO of a relatively small, publicly held EDA company being appointed the CEO of the programmable logic industry’s biggest company? I personally think it’s a great pick. While Moshe may not have the experience of heading up a company as big as Xilinx, I’m sure he’s very familiar with the market from an EDA and user perspective. Moshe also brings a pretty impressive track record for success, having made more than one big transition over the course of his career.

            I first met Moshe when he joined verification tool startup Verisity after he worked in the design trenches at LSI logic for many years. In 2001, he took Verisity public, raising $70 million in its IPO. Verisity was counted the single most successful IPO of that year across all industries (granted 2001 was an Internet bubble crash year) and helped bring much needed attention to the EDA industry.

            A couple of years later, the company expanded its ranks by acquiring emulation vendor Axis Systems. Then a couple of years ago, Moshe sold Verisity to Cadence for $315 million. He then stayed with Cadence for quite a while, heading up its verification group before making the move to Xilinx.

On top of the impressive track record, Moshe’s always struck me as a gentlemen and straight shooter, so I think personality wise he’ll be a great fit with the Xilinx folks. A couple of months ago, when I heard Wim was vacating the CEO spot, I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to many of Xilinx’ long-time employees. It’s pretty typical that when a company appoints a new CEO, the first thing the CEO does is try to over impress the board and investors and show he or she is a “do-er”—that usually means the first they do is a mindless house cleaning, which usually amounts to a massive knee-jerk round of layoffs.

Of course that would be sad for Xilinx, which over the years has built a reputation for being a great place to work and under Wim’s tenure the company built up a strong and loyal staff that took Xilinx to the lead in the programmable space. I’m sure Moshe gets it and he’ll try to motivate the crew he has rather than decimate it.

Still Moshe comes to Xilinx at a challenging time. The economy is a bit sketchy and competitors are putting price pressure on Xilinx’ high end devices. It will be interesting to see how Moshe and Xilinx deal with these issues.

Given all that, I can’t help but think that Moshe’s a good pick for Xilinx and that his EDA and user experience will come in handy. He effectively brought a user perspective to verification with Verisity and my bet is he’ll do the same in the FPGA world.