PLDA Expands US Presence in Response to Strong Revenue Growth in the Region

Key personnel moves to enhance support and access for North American customers

San Jose, Calif. -- June 2, 2006—PLDApplications (PLDA), the leader in the PCI, PCI-X, and PCI Express IP market, today announced the expansion of its US operations with the hire of Callan Carpenter as Vice President of Business Development and the relocation of Co-founder and Chief Technical Officer Stéphane Hauradou.

"The company's fundamentals—satisfied customers, high quality products, and solid profitability—first piqued my interest in PLDA," explains Mr. Carpenter, "but it's the outstanding growth potential that convinced me to take the job." Mr. Carpenter most recently served as the Vice President and General Manager of the PHY Solutions Business Unit at Arm, Inc.

You can meet Mr. Carpenter at the PCI-SIG DevCon conference June 8 and 9 in San Jose, California, where he and the PLDA Sales team will highlight the company's newest prototyping boards and IP controllers, including the industry's first hardware tested x8 PCIe FPGA solution (Virtex 4).

Mr. Hauradou has directed product development since the company's inception in 1996 and is today responsible for customer support and technical partner development. "Expansion of our North American presence enhances our ability to support current customers and allows better responsiveness to the future needs of the market," explains Mr. Hauradou. "My relocation is a fundamental structural shift that reflects the growing importance of the North American and Asian markets."

The Linley Group recently wrote in A Guide to High-Speed Interconnects, "PLDA is the largest provider of IP cores for the logical and transport layers of PCI, PCI-X and PCI Express." Today, PLDA is the frontrunner in the PCI Express FPGA market space, and since the earliest introduction of the protocol the company has consistently listed products on the PCI-SIG integrator list. With over 200 PCI Express licenses sold and two families of PCI Express IP that support x1, x4, and x8 Lanes for Root Port, Endpoint, Bridge, and Switch configurations, PLDA is well placed to achieve expected growth targets.

About Callan Carpenter

Callan Carpenter comes to PLDA with over 20 years experience in the electronics industry. His background includes a variety of roles in engineering, sales, marketing and executive management. Mr. Carpenter most recently served as the Vice President and General Manager of the PHY Solutions Business Unit at Arm, Inc. Prior to that, he was the CEO of the Austin-based EDA start-up Silicon Metrics. Mr. Carpenter is also a former Vice President of Marketing for Mentor Graphics. He holds a BSEE and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin.

About Stéphane Hauradou

Stéphane Hauradou co-founded PLDA in 1996. He earned a Bachelor of Engineering from the Polytechnic School of Montreal and a Masters in Microelectronics from Sup'Telecom in Paris. His masters thesis concentrated on the development of the first PCI IP controller for Programmable Logic Devices. Since then, Mr. Hauradou has held several positions within PLDA, including product development, product marketing, and pre and post-sales technical support.

About PLDA

PLDA has posted continual growth in profits and revenue for the last eight years designing and selling a wide range of ASIC and FPGA interfacing solutions for the PCI and derivative markets (PCI Express, PCI-X, and CompactPCI). The company has offices in the US and Europe and an international distribution network. It offers complete solutions, including IP cores, hardware, software, consulting services, and comprehensive technical support provided directly by the IP designers. For additional information about PLD Applications, please visit http://www.plda.com.