Xilinx Takes Time To Select New CEO

Xilinx XLNX (NASDAQ), the programmable-chip maker, appointed a new CEO, Moshe Gavrielov, to replace long-time CEO Willem R. Roelandts (served since 1996). Back in August Roelandt's announced his decision to resign as president and CEO upon the appointment of his replacement. The company's five month job search for Roelandt's replacement appears to have come to a good end. Roelandt will remain chairman of the board and has stated he intends to remain in that position for some time.

Gavrielov appears to have been a good choice. While not a specialist in programmable-chips he has extensive executive and high-tech experience under his belt which should serve him well in his new position. According to Electronics Weekly and the company's press release announcing the appointment,

Most recently, Gavrielov served as executive vp and general manager of the verification division at Cadence Design Systems. Before that he spent seven years as CEO of Verisity, where he grew the company from a $4m start-up, taking it through its initial public offering in 2001 to a $70m publicly-traded company, and ultimately to its acquisition by electronic design automation leader Cadence in 2005.

Gavrielov had an interview with EDN.com in which he elaborated about his background and experience and what he planned to do for Xilinx.

He spent ten years designing high-performance processors and peripherals. Then there was a long stay at then-LSI Logic, where, in Gavrielov’s words, he helped drive the transition from LSI as a company that supplied empty gate arrays to a company rich in IP and integration expertise. The third phase of Gavrielov’s career took place at start-up Verisity and then at acquiring company Cadence. “We recognized then that front-end logic verification had become the top problem in chip design,” Gavrielov said. “In fact, I think it still is one of the top problems.”

So other than general management experience, what does this background have to do with running a $2B, apparently maturing, fabless FPGA giant? Gavrielov sites an interesting parallel. “I think the opportunity for growth here is that FPGAs are becoming more and more relevant to a wider range of designers. But it’s not just about gates—it’s about the IP as well. In that way, Xilinx today is in a similar transition to the one LSI had while I was there: moving from a supplier of blank gates to also being a supplier and supporter of the IP that goes into the gates. But supporting a body of IP in the field is a non-trivial undertaking.”

So Gavrielov sees a three-fold challenge for Xilinx. First, it must maintain its pace in enlarging the capabilities of the underlying silicon. Second, it must build its portfolio of IP across a growing breadth of applications. And third, the company must continue to pour investment into its development tools, so they are able both to serve the needs of an increasingly diverse—and, one suspects, increasingly specialized and FPGA-naive—community of users and to continue hiding the growing complexity of the actual FPGA circuitry from those users.

Give Gavrielov some time to get his feet wet but his appointment could be just the right move for the company. He seems to understand what the firm needs and appears to have the skills necessary to grow the business.

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