Three New VPs at Symwave

Symwave, Inc., a semiconductor supplier of analog/mixed-signal connectivity solutions for the PC, consumer and mobile devices, announced the completion of its executive staff appointments for the company’s marketing and engineering organizations. The new hires include Gideon Intrater, vice president of solutions architecture; John O’Neill, vice president of marketing; and Craig Stein, vice president of engineering.

In addition, Symwave has expanded and relocated its corporate headquarters to Orange County, California and has redirected its business focus to address the explosive market opportunity and customer demand for USB 3.0, the recently announced specification, which is 10 times faster than today’s fastest USB devices.

To ensure that Symwave leverages the world’s first USB 3.0 physical layer technology into more complex and innovative end products, the company appointed Gideon Intrater as vice president of solutions architecture. Mr. Intrater brings more than 25 years of experience in the semiconductor market with extensive experience architecting over 200 System-on-Chip solutions targeting numerous end-market applications. Prior to joining Symwave, he spent over ten years at MIPS Technologies where he served as vice president of solutions architecture and participated in its successful IPO. Previously, he spent ten years in technical management positions with National Semiconductor Corporation. Mr. Intrater is the named inventor of over 20 U.S. patents.

John O’Neill was appointed vice president of marketing, bringing 16 years of extensive and relevant experience in semiconductor engineering and marketing. Previously, he was vice president of marketing at ClariPhy Communications, an early stage star-tup. Prior to that, he spent five years at Broadcom as senior director of marketing. Under his leadership, Broadcom successfully entered the DSL market and became the number one worldwide market share  provider of DSL and PON system ICs. Prior to Broadcom, Mr. O’Neill was vice president of marketing at Globespan and participated in its successful IPO. His early career involved developing integrated circuits for use in hard disk drives at VTC Inc, which was acquired by Agere Systems.

Craig Stein was appointed vice president of engineering and brings over 21 years of highly successful engineering and management experience to Symwave. Most recently, Mr. Stein spent seven years at Broadcom where he built and led a team of over 120 engineers helping Broadcom’s major successes in both Bluetooth and Gigabit Ethernet controllers. Under his leadership, over 200 customer end-projects were completed and ramped to volume production. Prior to Broadcom, Mr. Stein served as R&D Manager for HP‘s enterprise servers and was an ASIC designer at VLSI Technology.

In addition to Symwave’s latest executive hires, the company recently demonstrated Quasar, the world’s first physical layer device (PHY) designed specifically to comply with the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 specification which enables 10 times faster connections for PCs and consumer electronics devices. Quasar is targeted at fast-growing ‘sync-and-go’ applications such as external storage, portable phones and media players, HD camcorders and other applications requiring high-speed data transfer capabilities.

"We are pleased with the progress we have made this year in expanding our operations, redirecting our technology focus and building a team of seasoned industry executives to help us achieve our next phase of growth. The hiring of Gideon, John and Craig has made an immediate impact in our engineering development, customer engagements and overall company vision and strategy,” said Yossi Cohen, president and CEO of Symwave. “The company’s successful launch of the world’s first USB 3.0 PHY is one very public example of the leadership capabilities and the drive of these individuals and the entire Symwave team. We look forward to our continued efforts and success in capturing what will be a huge market opportunity.”