Sir Hossein Yassaie, the former CEO of Imagination Technologies, has joined the board of directors of analog intellectual property (IP) startup Agile Analog.

Yassaie, who stepped down from Imagination Technologies in 2016, was brought in as non-executive board director because of his industry expertise, contacts, experience in floating a company, according to Andrew Farrugia, the company’s VP marketing, in a telephone briefing with EE Times. Farrugia said Yassaie may also assist in development of its technology.

Agile Analog, based in Cambridge in the UK, came out of stealth mode in May 2019 with the announcement of a $5m funding round. It said it intends to address a bottleneck in chip design with its AI-driven platform that replaces the manual design process for analog IP.

Speaking about his appointment, Yassaie said, “Agile Analog is changing the status quo by addressing the long-standing inefficiencies in creating and delivering analog circuits across process technologies. The revolutionary automated approach leads to efficient and timely availability of much-needed high-quality, reliable and easy-to-use analog IP. There is no doubt in my mind that Agile Analog is set to disrupt the semiconductor industry.” He added, “I’m thrilled to be joining such a distinguished team, and I am looking forward to helping drive Agile Analog's rapid growth and bring their analog IP products to the global semiconductor market.”

Since leaving Imagination, Yassaie has been active in many areas of the UK electronics industry. According to the UK’s Companies House register, he has 17 directorships, with a number of non-executives roles, chairmanships and investments in numerous tech startups, including Ultrahaptics.

Agile Analog’s chairman, Pete Hutton, believes Yassaie’s appointment is significant for the company; he said, “Sir Hossein Yassaie will be instrumental to Agile Analog’s growth as we develop more analog IP products that are customizable, robust and reliable – helping our customers bring innovative chips to market faster.”

Agile Analog Board

Sir Hossein Yossaie (center), with Agile Analog CEO Time Ramsdale (left), and chairman Pete Hutton (right). (Image: Agile Analog)

Agile Analog says it is transforming the analog IP market through automation of the design and delivery of analog IP for microchips. Analog IP connects the real world to the ubiquitous digital world and is needed on practically all modern microchips. It currently offers eight analog IP blocks and plans to release new products over the coming months, according to Farrugia, who added that since we spoke to the company in May, it has upgraded its ADC to cover a wider frequency range and to be scalable to higher performance

Farrugia added that since launching at the DAC conference earlier this year, it has received significant new investor interest as it seeks to start looking at its next investment round. The company’s participation also resulted in them gaining an opportunity to exhibit at the Samsung Foundry Forum in Munich, Germany, next month.

By: DocMemory
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