Management Team
Charlie Cheng
CEO
Charlie Cheng has 10 years experience in the IP industry and another 15-year record establishing global footprints in the technology marketplace. Mr. Cheng was formerly Vice President of Marketing and International Business at Faraday Technology where he grew the then Taiwan-centric company into an international presence. Prior to joining Faraday, he was the co-founder and CEO of Lexra Inc., an embedded RISC CPU IP company. Mr. Cheng also pioneered in the semiconductor IP business as the Vice President of Marketing at Aspec Technology.
Jeff Ball
VP of Corporate Development
Jeff Ball has 10 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. Most recently, Jeff headed up JPMorgan’s semiconductor investment banking practice. At JPMorgan, Jeff's clients included some of the largest technology companies in the world, including Intel and Texas Instruments. Prior to JPMorgan, Jeff practiced corporate securities law in Palo Alto. Jeff received his JD and MBA from Santa Clara University. He received his BA in Economics and Theology from Georgetown University.
Lee Cleveland
VP of Engineering
Lee Cleveland has 26 years of experience in the semiconductor industry leading cutting edge NVM development and high valued analog integrated circuits design. Most recently, Lee was the Senior VP of Engineering at Sipex, now part of Exar. During his tenure at Sipex, he cut the product development cycle by 50% and reduced the average number of design revisions by 70%. Lee released over 150 new products in 5 years with a 2.5x improvement in throughput over the previous 5 year period. Prior to Sipex/Exar, Lee held engineering management positions at AMD and Spansion where he was directly responsible for several generations of platform products, earning 61 patents in algorithms, circuits, processes and testing techniques. He received his BS in Electrical Engineering at University of California, Berkeley.
Harry Luan
CTO
Harry Luan has over 20 years of experience with a strong background in VLSI semiconductor process technology, integration, device engineering, product reliability, and product qualification. He is an expert in CMOS/NVM memory device physics, modeling, optimization, and characterization for technology development, yield enhancement, and failure analysis. Prior to joining Kilopass, Harry Luan held various technical and management positions at AMD, Hynix, Cypress, and Winbond. He made key contributions in research and development of non-volatile memory and logic technologies including EPROM, EEPROM, FLASH, SONOS, R-RAM, and CPLD. Dr. Luan obtained his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University.
Juan Chapa
VP of Worldwide Sales
Juan Chapa has over 15 years of experience in semiconductor OEM and Distribution sales including 7 years in the semiconductor IP space. He was Senior Director of North America sales at Artisan/ARM, and most recently, Juan was North America VP of Sales at Tensilica where his team drove 55% of the Tensilica’s total revenue. He has also held various management positions at Mosel/Vitelic Semi, Cypress Semi, Wyle Labs, and Xeorx Corp.
Linh Hong
VP of Marketing and Applications
Linh Hong is the VP of Marketing at Kilopass. She has been in the semiconductor industry for 13 years mainly focused in broadband communication ASICs, high speed SERDES IP, and logic NVM IP. She has a breadth of experience including digital and mixed signal designs, technical marketing, field applications, and reliability engineering from Sun Microsystems and LSI Logic. She holds a BS in Physics and an MSEE from the University of California, Davis.