Kilopass Technology Announces Charlie Cheng as the New CEO

Industry Luminary, Bernie Aronson, Retires After Serving Four Transformative Years Elevating Kilopass as the Leader in Logic Non-Volatile Memory

Santa Clara, CA -- October 27, 2008 – Kilopass Technology, a leading provider of semiconductor logic non-volatile memory (NVM) intellectual property (IP), today announced the appointment of Charlie Cheng as its new Chief Executive Officer.  Bernie Aronson, who has served as the CEO for four successful years, has decided to retire.

“I am very pleased with the company’s progress during my four years at Kilopass,” said Aronson. ”I know I'm leaving the company in good hands, with an exceptional team of professionals, and am confident that they will continue to lead the embedded NVM market.”

With Bernie’s guidance, Kilopass has reached a distribution of 100-plus licenses to over 50 customers. The company has well over 100M units in chip production and has established a close partnership with TSMC, where its non-volatile memories are supported on many process nodes, from 180nm to the most advanced nodes on the market.  With the top-notch team Bernie has recruited, Kilopass is now well-positioned to scale the business.

“Kilopass has come a long way during Bernie Aronson's tenure,” said Arati Prabhakar, board member and General Partner at U.S. Venture Partners. “On behalf of the Board of Directors, I would like to thank Bernie for establishing what is now a solid company ready for a new successor.”

“We are very excited to have Charlie on the team,” said board member John Malloy, Partner and co-founder of BlueRun Ventures. “He brings with him experience and accomplishments from two semiconductor IP companies, as well as vast knowledge in system architecture, design methodology, marketing and organizational management.”

Charlie Cheng has 20 years industry experience, 10 of which are specifically in semiconductor IP.  Prior to Kilopass, Charlie held vice president positions at Faraday, in general management and marketing, with the main responsibility of expanding global business. Before Faraday, Charlie was the founder and CEO of Lexra, an embedded RISC CPU IP company.  Charlie began his technology career at General Electric and IBM, and has worked at Iomega, Zycad, Viewlogic, and Aspec Technology.  

“I am very honored to have the opportunity to take Kilopass to its next milestone,” said new CEO, Charlie Cheng.  “Bernie has done a tremendous job building the foundation, and now it’s my goal to deliver the business and financial success that it deserves.”

About Kilopass

Kilopass Technology, Inc., a fast-growing supplier of embedded NVM intellectual property, leverages standard logic CMOS processes to deliver one-time programmable (OTP) structures based on its extra-permanent memory (XPM) technology. The memory can be used for the storage of firmware, security codes, calibration data and other application-critical information. Kilopass is funded by BlueRun Ventures, iGlobe Partners, Pitango Venture Capital, and US Venture Partners. The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA. For more information, please visit www.kilopass.com or email info@kilopass.com.