Ex-Intel Global Senior VP Jim Finnegan joins Corigine

May 26, 2022 -- In recent years, with the maturity of technologies such as 5G, AI, IoT, and cloud computing, the hot areas of IC industry development have been constantly enriched, which creates broad market prospects for the IC industry. However, due to the impact of the new COVID-19 epidemic and market demand, the IC industry suffers from a “shortage of chips”. At the same time, the shortage of talent is extremely severe, especially the lack of key or leading talents who have mastered relevant technologies.

Corigine considers talented people as the most important resource of the company. Corigine combines the industry’s and its own developmental needs while also implementing global, top, and professional employment values. Today, former Intel global senior VP and general Manager of network processor division, Jim Finnegan, joined Corigine.

Sheng Lu, Chairman and CEO of Corigine (left) and Jim Finnegan, Executive VP of Corigine (right)

Jim Finnegan, Executive Vice President of Corigine

Jim Finnegan has over 30 years of senior level experience in the semiconductor, networking, and communications industries before joining Corigine. During his time as the COO of Netronome, a supplier of network flow processors, he oversaw and managed the chip development for all the NFP products. Before joining Netronome, Jim Finnegan served as Intel’s global senior VP and general manager of the network processor division. Under his leadership, Intel’s IXP network processors became very successful and are widely used in 3G/4G base stations around the world.

Why Corigine?

Jim Finnegan says that companies and start-ups tend to have many different approaches. “I am motivated not only by intriguing cutting-edge technical work, but also by passionate and smart engineers who want to improve their skills. And Mr. Sheng Lu, the visionary and CEO of Corigine is able to provide both of these. I believe that in the next few years, based on the broad market prospects and the technology products and solutions currently being developed, Corigine will inevitably become a new tech giant.”

With the explosive growth of computing power, the traditional CPU architecture is no longer suitable for this age of development and large amounts of data processing now relies on the DPU. However, building a high-performance DPU requires overcoming the “PPA” challenges (“Power, Performance, Area” industry jargon for reducing power consumption, enhancing performance, and reducing cost). Jim Finnegan believes that overcoming the PPA is the unique advantage of Corigine. Its highly parallel architecture is based on thousands of small specialized RISC-V kernels that optimizes the network with a scalable distributed switching architecture.

How to lead the team to success?

Jim Finnegan says that the smartest and best engineers are a prerequisite for technological innovation. Successful results also can not be assured without instilling a highly disciplined approach to development. In addition, by focusing on data-driven technology and efficiency, the highest quality products will be delivered on time. Through an unwavering focus on quality, accuracy and consistency in development methods, Corigine is bound to make many breakthroughs and ultimately launch the industry-leading DPU.

Corigine's global top talent pool

“International team, top talent, and elites” are the three characteristics of Corigine’s talent system. The R&D and management teams usually come from well-known companies in the global industry, including Marvell, Broadcom, Intel, Synopsys, Cadence etc. Most of the R&D teams also come from world-renowned universities, including Stanford, Columbia, Carnegie Mellon, the University of Toronto, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Fudan University, Tsinghua University and Taiwan Jiaotong University.

Among the many core technology experts, Sheng Lu, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Corigine is an important member. After obtaining a bachelor’s degree from Shanghai Jiaotong University and a master’s degree from Lamar University, Sheng Lu worked in the Silicon Valley for more than 20 years, holding important positions in Marvell and Brodacom where he led the teams in the R&D of network switches and mobile phone chips. Based on his extensive experience, he is able to fully use the simulation tools and his valuable experience of “one-time success”.

Sheng Lu, founder, chairman, and CEO of Corigine

In addition, Yingan Chen, vice president of R&D and head of Corigine’s SmartNIC and USB IP projects, is also an industry leader. As a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University, Yingan Chen held executive positions at Marvell and Synopsis before joining Corigine. During this time, he accumulated a rich experience in the three IP fields (memory controller, USB3.0 controller, PCIE3.0 controller) and SoC test chip verification. He has also served as a judge and rotating chairman of DAC and ICCAD for many years.

Mike Shei, co-vice president of R&D, is in charge of the R&D of MimicPro, Corigine’s EDA tool. As one of the original pioneers in the EDA simulation field, in the past 30 years, he has not only established a simulation systems company, but also served as a key executive of Synopsys and Cadence. He also led a team of engineers to receive simulation system orders from major customers such as Qualcomm, Broadcom, MediaTek, and Apple. Mike Shei has extensive experience in the field of chip verification and holds a total of 12 patents for simulation and prototyping systems.

In the face of the current severe lack of talent in the semiconductor industry and the rapidly developing markets of DPU and EDA, Corigine plans to continue to strengthen and expand its top talent pool in 2022 in order to grasp opportunities and remain at the forefront of the industry.

Corigine's Core Values

Corporate culture is a crucial part in attracting and growing talented employees. The letters in Corigine each represent one of the company’s core values: customer first, (focus on the)objective, responsibility, innovation, globalization, integrity, never give up, (pursuing the)extreme. Based on such corporate culture, Corigine has attracted a steady stream of top talents from all around the world who have been actively engaged in R&D.

“Under the careful polishing of the global team of top talents, Corigine’s key product technology is leading the industry, setting the benchmark for main international suppliers. At the same time, Corigine is also committed to letting more people know about the true strength of this company.” Sheng Lu said that in the future, through continual implementation of global, top, and professional employment values, Corigine hopes to turn competition into motivation and challenges into opportunities. This way, Corigine can improve and optimize their key technologies and products.