Management Team

Dennis Segers, CEO
Dennis Segers joined Tabula in May 2006 after serving as an independent board member for two years. Prior to Tabula he served as president, CEO, and director of Matrix Semiconductor. Matrix pioneered the design and development of three-dimensional integrated circuits, a first in the history of semiconductor technology. At Matrix, Dennis oversaw the transition of the company from the early technology feasibility phase to high volume production, culminating in the acquisition of the company by SanDisk in January 2006.

Previously, Dennis served as the senior vice president and general manager of the FPGA product groups at Xilinx. He oversaw the development and introduction of the Virtex family of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), the most successful programmable logic family in the industry's history. Under his direction the high end FPGA division grew from a $300M business to over $1.4B. In April 2000 he was elected to the Xilinx board of directors.

A 30-year industry veteran, Dennis began his career at Mostek Corporation as a product development engineer for Mostek's 16K DRAMs. He has held a variety of management positions in circuit design, process technology, and product development. Throughout his career Dennis has overseen the successful development and market introduction of over 40 products and technologies in a wide range of IC businesses including; memory, logic, and mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs).

He has served as a board member and advisor to numerous venture capital backed startups and public companies. Dennis is currently a director for Azuro, Inc., a privately held EDA company, and Parade Technologies, Ltd., a private fabless semiconductor company. A past member of the board of directors of the Fabless Semiconductor Association (now the Global Semiconductor Alliance, GSA), Dennis currently serves as the Chairman of the GSA Emerging Company CEO Council.

Dennis received a BS Electrical Engineering degree from Texas A&M in 1975. He is a member of the College of Engineering Advisory Board, and was a 2008 Outstanding Alumni Award recipient.
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Steve Teig, President and CTO
Prior to co-founding Tabula, Steve Teig was CTO of Cadence Design Systems. Steve joined Cadence through its acquisition of Simplex Solutions (NSDQ: SPLX), where he was also CTO. At Simplex, Steve invented and led the technology development for the X Architecture, which radically improves chip design by pervasively incorporating diagonal wiring.

Before joining Simplex, Steve co-founded two successful biotechnology companies: CombiChem (NSDQ: CCHM, later acquired by DuPont Pharmaceuticals), where he was CTO, and BioCAD, where he was CTO and, later, CEO. At CombiChem, Steve invented and led the development of the company’s revolutionary Discovery Engine technology, with which CombiChem discovered pharmaceutical-lead compounds for 11 different therapeutic areas in only five years. At BioCAD, Steve designed Catalyst, which is still the leading software used worldwide for pharmaceutical discovery.

In the 1980s, Steve spent several years in the EDA industry, where his work had a major impact still felt today. First, at Trilogy Systems, he invented the now-universal technique of compiled-code logic simulation. Then, as CTO and co-founder of Tangent Systems (which later became Cadence’s very first acquisition), he invented the principal place-and-route algorithms for the Tancell and Tangate products. These techniques form the core of Cadence’s Gate Ensemble, Cell-3 Ensemble, and Silicon Ensemble systems and underlie most of today’s other physical design systems as well.

Steve received a B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University. He holds over 200 patents. In 2002, he broke Thomas Edison’s record for the number of patents filed by an individual in a single year.
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Alain Bismuth, Vice President, Marketing
Prior to joining Tabula, Alain Bismuth, a 20-year veteran of the semiconductor industry, was vice president of Altera’s HardCopy product group. In this role he launched the HardCopy product line, the most successful line of structured ASIC products to date.

Previously, Alain was vice president of Altera’s consumer, computer, and industrial business group, where he lead the rapid growth of Altera’s business outside of the communications market segment, particularly in new, high-volume consumer applications. Alain also led the definition and launch of Altera’s Cyclone FPGA family, the world’s first true low-cost FPGA product targeting high-volume consumer applications.

Before joining Altera, Alain was at LSI Logic for almost 10 years, where he held various senior marketing and sales management positions. He led LSI Logic’s European sales organization in the computer and consumer segments, and moved to LSI Logic’s headquarters in Milpitas, California in the mid-1990’s. There he led the team that introduced the world’s first integrated DVD player/decoder chip and gave LSI Logic the top market-share position in this market.

Alain started his career as a product engineer at IBM Semiconductor. Alain received an M.S.E.E. from Ecole Centrale, Lyon, France, and a Master of Sciences in solid-state physics from Universite Claude Bernard, Lyon, France.
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Matt Crowley, Vice President, Hardware Development
Prior to joining Tabula, Matt Crowley served as Vice President of 3D Memory Development at SanDisk Corporation. In this role Matt drove all aspects of 3D product and technology development focused on both one-time-programmable (OTP) and rewritable nonvolatile memories.

Prior to SanDisk, Matt served as Vice President at Matrix Semiconductor, where he drove product development activities that encompassed product, process, and technology development. In this role Matt oversaw the successful development and mass production of two generations of 3D one-time-programmable (OTP) products. He also held both management and senior technical roles where he worked on a broad array of test vehicles and products, with responsibilities in architecture definition, circuit and layout design, CAD definition and implementation, and silicon debug and characterization.

Before Matrix, Matt held management and staff positions at AMD where he contributed to the successful K6, K7, and K8 processor line, working on a wide variety of digital, mixed signal, and analog design projects, ranging from high-speed RAM blocks to PLL and I/O solutions. Matt joined AMD by way of the NexGen acquisition; at NexGen, Matt was a staff designer focused on high-speed I/O design as well as packaging and signal integrity modeling and simulation.

Matt started his career as a design engineer at Amdahl Corporation. He received a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He holds over 15 U.S. patents. Matt also serves as a technical committee member for the GSA.
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Daniel Gitlin, Vice President, Manufacturing Technology
Before joining Tabula, Daniel Gitlin served as vice president of semiconductor technology of Xilinx. Daniel was instrumental in driving process technology and establishing key industry partnerships during his 15 year tenure. Under Daniel’s leadership, Xilinx led the fabless semiconductor industry in advanced process technology adoption.

Before Xilinx, Daniel was a member of the technical staff at LSI Logic Corporation. With more than 20 years of collective experience in semiconductors, Daniel has served as a member of the Technology Strategy Committee of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), has published numerous technical publications and holds more than ten patents.

Daniel received his bachelor's degree in engineering physics from the UAM, Mexico and graduate degrees in applied physics and electrical engineering from Harvard University and UCLA, respectively.
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Michal Jacobi, Vice President, Business Operations
Prior to co-founding Tabula, Michal Jacobi was responsible for the US operations of two early-stage software companies in Israel. A seasoned veteran engineering and operations executive of several start-ups, Michal’s expertise is building well-integrated, multi-disciplinary teams.

Previously, Michal was software manager for new development of ultrasound systems at Acuson (Siemens). Before joining Acuson, Michal worked with Tabula President and CTO Steve Teig at BioCAD, as vice president of engineering, heading the Catalyst® development team. After BioCAD was acquired by MSI, Michal integrated the two companies’ product lines and development teams, and stayed on to run the Silicon Valley division of MSI.

Michal and Steve also teamed at Tangent systems, where Michal was software engineering manager. After Tangent’s acquisition by Cadence Design Systems, Michal managed the development of Cadence place-and-route systems. Michal came to Tangent from Daisy Systems, where she was manager of software engineering for the company in Israel.

Michal received her computer-sciences training and started her career in the famed Israeli Army Computer Unit. Michal Jacobi received a B.Sc, Cum Laude, in Life Sciences from Tel Aviv University, Israel.
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Steve Haynes, Vice President, Worldwide Sales
Prior to Tabula, Mr. Haynes was the Vice President of Worldwide Sales at Xilinx from 1998 to 2005. Mr. Haynes career at Xilinx spanned 18 years, including Eastern U. S. Director of Sales and Vice President of North American Sales, and was instrumental in guiding Xilinx sales growth to $1.6B annually.

In addition to his time at Xilinx, Mr. Haynes also served in both Sales and Marketing capacities at both National Semiconductor and Silicon Systems.
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Rajeev Jayaraman, Vice President, Software Development
Rajeev Jayaraman joined Tabula in September 2008. He has over 17 years of experience in various aspects of programmable logic. Prior to joining Tabula, Rajeev was Sr. Director of Implementation Software at Xilinx where he was responsible for the Synthesis, Place, Route, Timing, and Bitstream generation for all of Xilinx' FPGAs. In this role he oversaw and drove product development for the implementation tools in the Xilinx ISE product. Under Rajeev's leadership, Xilinx implementation tools have achieved a leadership position in FPGA implementation software winning acclaim from customers and numerous industry awards.

Rajeev started his career designing placement and routing algorithms for the Xilinx XC3000 device. Since then he has had several different roles ranging from technical software lead for Xilinx' new architecture development to build and managing development teams distributed in multiple sites around the world. In 2000, he was awarded the Ross Freeman award for technical innovation - the highest technical award given by Xilinx to an employee for contributions that most directly contributed to success of the company.

Rajeev received his Bachelors degree (B.Tech) in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India. He received his MS and Ph.D degree in Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. He has been on the technical and program committees of various conferences including Intl. Conf. on Computer Aided Design (ICCAD), Design Automation Conf (DAC), FPGA Symposium (FPGA), and Intl. Conf. on Computer Design (ICCD). He has been an invited panelist and a contributor to the Intl. Symposium on Physical Design, DAC, and Design Con. He was associate editor for the ACM Transactions Special Issue on Programmable Logic. He has published several papers in various refereed conferences and holds several patents.
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Mike Staiger, CFO
Prior to joining Tabula, Mike Staiger was executive vice president and chief financial officer of Copper Mountain Networks, where, during his seven-year tenure, he also served as vice president, business development. With more than 17 years of industry experience in both private and public companies, Mike brings an entrepreneurial background and a strong track record of building successful strategic partnerships.

Before joining Copper Mountain, Mike was vice president, business development at Shiva Corporation, where he was responsible for all aspects of Shiva’s business development strategy, including strategic partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, and technology licensing activities. Previously, Mike was co-founder and vice president, business development for AirSoft, Inc., from 1993 until its acquisition by Shiva in 1996.

Mike holds a BA in English from the University of Michigan and an MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.
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