CHIPS Alliance Brings on Rob Mains as New Executive Director

Industry veteran to lead open hardware consortium democratizing silicon innovation

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 8, 2021 – CHIPS Alliance, the leading consortium advancing common and open hardware for interfaces, processors and systems, today announced the appointment of Rob Mains as the organization’s new executive director.

Rob has over 35 years of experience in software engineering and development, with 25 years of experience as an EDA software architect focused on microprocessor design and advanced process node technologies. He most recently served as a technology advisor at Spillbox, and prior to that worked in leadership and senior engineering roles at Qualcomm, Sun Microsystems (staying on at Oracle after the acquisition) and IBM. Throughout his career, Rob has worked closely with hardware developers to play a hands-on role in helping to devise innovative solutions for a wide range of applications.

“Rob is an ideal fit for the CHIPS Alliance with his strong leadership experience and deep understanding of the silicon industry,” said Dr. Zvonimir Bandić, Chairman, CHIPS Alliance. “As the CHIPS Alliance runs full steam ahead with its growing membership, impressive technical milestones and other activities, we look forward to having Rob on board to continue this strong momentum.”

“As more companies are looking to open source solutions to help eliminate design barriers, reduce costs and speed up development time, the CHIPS Alliance will play a critical role in advancing open hardware for the benefit of everyone,” said Mains. “I look forward to working closely with CHIPS Alliance members to continue the organization’s goals, while also focusing on growing the membership base.”

Today the CHIPS Alliance has more than 25 members collaborating to accelerate the creation and deployment of open system-on-chips (SoCs), peripherals and software development tools for a wide range of applications. To learn more, check out the CHIPS Alliance 2020 Annual Report: https://chipsalliance.org/chips-alliance-2020-annual-report/.

About the CHIPS Alliance

The CHIPS Alliance is an organization which develops and hosts high-quality, open source hardware code (IP cores), interconnect IP (physical and logical protocols), and open source software development tools for design, verification, and more. The main aim is to provide a barrier-free collaborative environment, to lower the cost of developing IP and tools for hardware development. The CHIPS Alliance is hosted by the Linux Foundation. For more information, visit chipsalliance.org.

About the Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation was founded in 2000 and has since become the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Today, the Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and its projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure, including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js and more. The Linux Foundation focuses on employing best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, visit linuxfoundation.org.