Pankaj Kukkal, the newly elected chair, joined the Si2 board in 2020
Silicon Integration Initiative, a leading JV including chip-makers, elected the new Chairperson for its Board of Directors. At its Annual Members Meeting, it announced the name of Pankaj Kukkal, VP of EDA, emulation, & post-silicon engineering for Qualcomm Technologies as its next Board Chair. Si2 believes that Kukkal will help determine Si2’s direction in enabling the efficient design of semiconductor-based systems.
It is noteworthy that Kukkal joined the board in 2020 and worked for continued, improved tool interoperability for IC design flows. As per the official statement, he directs all Qualcomm EDA, emulation, and post-silicon engineering for mobile, compute, automotive and artificial intelligence/ machine learning.
Before Kukkal, Rahul Goyal, VP & GM of product design and ecosystem enablement at Intel served as the chairman from 2018-2022. “Rahul will continue to be an integral part of Si2’s board,” cleared John Ellis, Si2 president & CEO. “During his tenure as chair, Si2 created an internal technology incubator to develop new interoperability solutions. This incubator developed the Unified Power Model, a standard methodology and format now ready for industry adoption.”
Ellis further said that Kukkal’s election would ensure leadership continuity as Si2 expands collaborative opportunities to employ interoperability solutions into such advanced technologies as artificial intelligence, unified power modelling, chiplets, machine learning and design-in-the-cloud.
Newly-elected Chairperson Kukkal commented: “At Qualcomm, we have a multi-vendor strategy and interoperability is key to us. Interoperability through shared code will increase the level of innovation for the entire industry. It will also lead to a reduction in complexity for both suppliers and chipmakers, along with time-to-market design acceleration using standard formats and interfaces.”
Silicon Integration Initiative is a leading R&D JV providing standard interoperability solutions for silicon-to-system implementation. It has over 65 members, including semiconductor and fabless manufacturers, foundries and EDA companies. Si2 activities are conducted under the auspices of USA’s National Cooperative Research and Production Act, 1993, which defines R&D JVs and offers them significant protection against federal antitrust laws.
AI/ML Special Interest Group, Compact Model Coalition, OpenAccess Coalition, Technology Interoperability Trajectory Advisory CouNcil (TITAN) and Unified Power Model Working Group are some of its initiatives.
