Sidense Hires Industry Veteran Ken Wagner as Senior VP Engineering

Update: Synopsys Expands DesignWare IP Portfolio with Acquisition of Sidense Corporation (Oct. 17, 2017)

Ottawa, Canada – (January 21, 2016) - Sidense Corp., a leading developer of Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) One Time Programmable (OTP) IP cores, today announced that Ken Wagner has joined Sidense as the Company’s Senior Vice President of Engineering. Ken will be reporting to Sidense President and CEO Xerxes Wania and will assume responsibility for all of Sidense's engineering activities.

"We are very pleased to have Ken join the Sidense team and help shape the next exciting chapter in Sidense's continued growth," said Sidense President and CEO Xerxes Wania. "Ken brings considerable depth in terms of semiconductor development, engineering management, and executive management expertise that spans a broad range of technologies, products, and markets."

Dr. Ken Wagner has over 25 years of experience in electronic systems as a hardware and embedded software engineer, researcher and senior manager in Silicon Valley, New York and Canada. Ken has held senior management positions for companies such as IBM, Stream Machine, Siemens, S3 and Synopsys, working in processor, storage, telecom, video and imaging domains.

Most recently, Ken was Vice-President of Engineering for the Communication Products Division at PMC-Sierra, leading R&D teams in Canada, the U.S., Israel and India. He also held the title of Distinguished Engineer and led PMC's low-power initiatives. From 2000 to 2006 Ken was Director of Design Services at PMC-Sierra. Ken is an expert in design, verification, and implementation methodologies, leading to over 60 tape-outs of PMC telecom and storage ASICs and standard products.

Previously, Ken worked as Design and DFT Director for several Silicon Valley fabless IC startups designing video, graphics and imaging devices. At Synopsys, he managed software CAD development. At IBM, he was a Senior Engineer in EDA, consulting worldwide for IBM product development. Early in his career he designed mainframes at Amdahl.

Ken holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and B.Eng. from McGill University in Montreal. He is an Adjunct Professor at McGill University, is a Past Editor-In-Chief of IEEE Design & Test magazine, and is a Golden Core/Senior Member of the IEEE Computer Society & Circuits and Systems Society. He holds multiple patents from his employers including a First Plateau Patent award from IBM Corporation. Ken spent 1992 as an AAAS/IEEE Congressional Science Fellow in Washington, DC.

"Joining Sidense is an extremely exciting opportunity and I look forward to contributing to their excellent engineering team and their innovative memory IP portfolio," said Ken Wagner, Sidense Senior VP of Engineering. "As embedded memory and security assume an increasingly important role in our interconnected world, Sidense will continue its substantial growth as the industry leader in reliable, secure, and power-efficient memory IP for all key market segments."

About Sidense Corp.

Sidense Corp. provides very dense, highly reliable and secure non-volatile one-time programmable (OTP) Logic Non-Volatile Memory (LNVM) IP for use in standard-logic CMOS processes. The Company, with over 120 patents granted or pending, licenses OTP memory IP based on its innovative one-transistor 1T-Fuse™ bit cell, which does not require extra masks or process steps to manufacture. Sidense 1T-OTP macros provide a better field-programmable, reliable and cost-effective solution than flash, mask ROM, eFuse and other embedded and off-chip NVM technologies for many code storage, encryption key, analog trimming and device configuration uses.

Over 150 companies, including many of the top fabless semiconductor manufacturers and IDMs, have adopted Sidense 1T-OTP as their NVM solution for more than 500 designs. Customers are realizing outstanding savings in solution cost and power consumption along with better security and reliability for applications ranging from mobile and consumer devices to high-temperature, high-reliability automotive and industrial electronics. The IP is offered at and supported by all top-tier semiconductor foundries and selected IDMs. Sidense is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada with sales offices worldwide. For more information, please visit www.sidense.com.