J. Marc Edwards

J. Marc Edwards, has twenty (20) years of semiconductor component, Research-and-Design (RnD) experience at IBM, Cisco Systems, and two (2) co-founded, venture-backed, fabless semiconductor start-up companies (Protean Devices, ISIC Corporation). Mr. Edwards is a graduate-level (MSEE, Georgia Tech), research-grade engineer and entrepreneur (MBA, UNC-Chapel Hill) with deep-domain expertise in the semiconductor industry. Mr. Edwards has held director and principal-level engineering roles at the two leading EDA software companies, Cadence Design Systems and Synopsys, where his responsibilities focused upon enterprise semiconductor companies from a sales, support, marketing, and RnD role for the full spectrum of EDA software and services products. His direct customer experiences helping semiconductor companies develop SoC design methodologies and EDA product use-models as part of proprietary IT infrastructures, as well as the RnD & financial challenges inherent to fabless start-up companies, has led Mr. Edwards to redefine the inflective valuation points in the SoC supply chain. Mr. Edwards has worked in advanced technology leadership roles at both IBM and Cisco Systems, where he led product deployments of research-grade technologies. Mr. Edwards is a recognized industry leader in the field of SoC design-flow methodology, where he has participated in multiple industry standardization efforts including: low-power architecture specification (IEEE 1801), Network Processor Forum (NPF) hardware and software Application Interfaces (AIs), and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) “ForCEs” network-processing middleware standard. He co-founded two (2) venture-backed, fabless semiconductor companies, where he conceived the business and technical architectures for products at both companies. His first start-up company, Protean Devices was founded in conjunction with NEC Research (Tokyo, JP). His responsibilities included customer and target market identification and bring-to-market strategies. MSEE, Electrical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, March, 1986 Masters in Business Administration, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, August, 2007 BSEE, Electrical Engineering, Clemson University, May, 1983