Leadership

Management

  • ellis_3
    Ellis Smith
    Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

    Ellis Smith has experience as President and CEO with Orora Design Technologies, TransEDA, Exemplar Logic, and CrossCheck Technology. He has a long history of proven performance in growing a company’s top and bottom-lines in turn-around situations, building experienced management teams, leading mergers and acquisitions, and leading a company through an IPO. Mr. Smith also has strong experience in sales, marketing, and business development in every region of the world.

    In 2003, Mr. Smith joined Orora Design Technologies, Inc., an electronic design software company in Redmond, Washington, as President and CEO to secure funding and initiate sales as the company’s founder and CTO transitioned from a full-time professor to take over the daily operations of the company Mr. Smith joined TransEDA as CEO in 1999. At TransEDA, he built an experienced management team, structured the company for top- and bottom-line growth, and prepared it for an initial public offering. He led the company through its IPO on the London Stock Exchange, two acquisitions, and 18 months of growth after the successful IPO. Before joining TransEDA, Mr. Smith was president and CEO of Exemplar Logic, Inc. There, he tripled revenues and negotiated Exemplar’s successful 1999 buy-out and merger with Mentor Graphics Corporation.

    Before Exemplar, Mr. Smith was president of CrossCheck Technology, Inc., where he restructured and re-capitalized the company and completed its merger with Duet Technologies, Inc.

    Prior to CrossCheck, Mr. Smith spent his career in international business as an international director of EDA sales for CADAM, an IBM Company; as an international sales manager for Versatec, a Xerox Company; and as an international application engineer for Dictaphone Corporation. He began his career as an engineer for 3M Company.

    Mr. Smith has a B.S. from La Salle University, studied physics at the University of Oregon and advanced electronics in the U.S. Navy.

    rick
    Rick Dissly
    CPA Chief Financial Officer

    Rick Dissly is an experienced financial and business executive with broad, proven expertise in establishing profitable business models and systems in pre-IPO and post-IPO companies. He is also known for his successful work in mergers and acquisitions, and for maximizing value for shareholders in technology companies. Prior to his retirement, Mr. Dissly was Chief Financial Officer and Secretary of the Board of Directors at Photon Dynamics, Inc., a Nasdaq Company. At Photon Dynamics, Dissly managed a staff of 50 responsible for all aspects of manufacturing, finance, operational planning, and MIS, and led two follow-on public offerings.

    Mr. Dissly has held the positions of CFO at Semaphore Communications Corp., a Xerox Company, and at Crosscheck Technology. He was COO and VP of Finance at Award Software, and CFO, VP of Finance, and Director of Megatest Corporation. Before Megatest, Mr. Dissly was an accounting manager at American Microsystems, and started his career as a senior auditor for Price Waterhouse. Mr. Dissly has B.S. from Montana State University and an MBA from the University of Santa Clara.

    jenn
    Jenn Treiber
    Vice President, Operations

    Jennifer Treiber brings almost 20 years of Marketing Operations experience to Blue Pearl Software. During her six years as part of the Blue Pearl Management team, Mrs. Treiber has been responsible for managing and developing the financial structure and Human Resources of Blue Pearl Software. In addition, she has led the development and execution of the marketing programs, positioning Blue Pearl Software as the leader in RTL Analysis and Development.

    Being an integral part of the Sun Microsystem/Storage Tek acquisition, Mrs. Treiber was essential to the development and deployment of the Operational Centers of Excellence to complete the integration of the two companies to achieve the successful $4.1 billion acquisition.

    Mrs. Treiber holds a BS degree from California State University, Fresno.

    Dennis Nye
    Dennis Nye
    Vice President, North America and Europe Sales

    Dennis Nye brings his extensive prior experience of Sales and Marketing to Blue Pearl Software. He has operated within both the Semiconductor and EDA industries, with experience in a broad range of technologies and across all geographic areas.

    His experience spans both early-stage companies to major established industry leaders. During earlier roles, he was a significant participant in growing the businesses and then the successful IPOs at both Viewlogic and Actel. These activities provided valuable insight into FPGA usage and related markets with great applicability to Blue Pearl Software.

    During his career, Dennis has contributed to Intel, Daisy Systems, Viewlogic, Actel, Cadence, Magma and others. In the case of Actel (now Microchip), he spent 5 years as their Vice President Worldwide Marketing.

    Dennis builds sales channels, be they direct or indirect and believes and practises a structured sales approach. He combines this with a strategic view and strongly believes in the ‘crossing the chasm’ model for technology introduction and company expansion.

    Dennis holds a Bachelor of Technology degree in Applied Physics from Brunel University in the UK.

    Vili-Tamas
    Vili Tamas
    Vice President of Design Services and Consulting

    Vili Tamas has over 25 years of experience in methodology and design of semiconductor and software products. Before joining Blue Pearl, as Vice President of Design Services and Consulting, Vili successfully ran 2 startup companies, Alpha Design Technology and Andromeda Technology which were focused on design services and training in the IOT, mobile, and transportation industries.

    Prior to that, Vili worked within Intel’s strategic CAD organization and drove investments and methodology for Intel Corporation within the EDA space. This included funding Get2Chip which was successfully acquired by Cadence for over $90M. Vili also drove strategy for Intel in the system-level design space which produced Intel’s first system-level model within the mobility space, allowing SW development to be started prior to HW development. Vili also drove methodology in the areas of low power and front-end verification including linting for low power and verification.

    Vili holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering and sits on the Technical Advisory Board of Northwestern University. He was also on the board of directors of Atrenta (acquired by Synopsys) and Sigmatix (SW defined radios) which was developed in collaboration with Raytheon.

    david-wallace
    David E. Wallace
    Chief Scientist

    Dave Wallace has been working in EDA development for over 40 years. He has worked on physical design, timing verification, logic synthesis, physical synthesis, formal verification, layout compaction and migration, hardware linting, and CDC analysis. He is the inventor or co-inventor of six US patents, including Blue Pearl Software’s patent on User Grey Cells. He got his start in EDA working on placement and routing of gate arrays for IBM, and has subsequently worked at Hewlett Packard, Mentor Graphics, Exemplar Logic, Averant, Cadence Design Systems, and Blue Pearl Software. He has also worked in the Search Quality group at Google, and started his own in-home tutoring business where he helped over seventy high school, college, and graduate students with topics in Math, Statistics, Science, and Computer Science.

    In recent years, Dave has been interested in adapting selected ideas from the Extreme Programming and Agile Development communities to improve the quality of EDA software. His 2012 IWLS paper with Scott A. Bloom, “How Can We Build More Reliable EDA Software?” is available for download at the Blue Pearl web site.

    Dave has a Sc.B. degree magna cum laude from Brown University in Math and Computer Science, and MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. As part of his PhD program, he did an outside minor in Corporate Finance at the Haas School of Business.

    simon-matthews
    Simon Matthews
    Vice President, Engineering

    Simon Matthews has led multiple software development projects relating to EDA design flows. He has experience of ASIC and FPGA design from RTL to GDSII, at IP and semiconductor companies. He has extensive experience in managing multi-site development projects.

    Simon also has extensive experience developing infrastructure to support continuous integration and test flows, including high-performance grid computing, configuration management, web-based dashboards, running cross-platform Windows and Linux environments and test automation (for both GUI and CLI testing).

    Simon has a BSc. degree in Physics with Electronics from the University of Liverpool and is recognized in the UK as a Chartered Engineer.