Roger Carpenter, a Google hardware engineer with 30 years of experience in electronic design automation and chip design, has been elected to the Silicon Integration Initiative board of directors. Si2 is a research and development joint venture that provides standard interoperability solutions for integrated circuit design tools.

Before joining Google, Carpenter held executive roles at three EDA firms: Magma Design Automation, Javelin Design Automation and Envis. His design experience includes positions at Wave Computing, Broadcom, Chromatic Research and Xilinx. A holder of more than a dozen patents, Carpenter received a Bachelor’s and Master’s of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

John Ellis, Si2 president and CEO, said that Google’s membership on the Si2 board reflects the increasing impact of vertical integration in the electronics industry.  “A recent Si2 industry survey showed that over 80 percent of our end users develop some specialized, internal design tools. This proprietary software meets their unique needs and performance requirements,” Ellis said.

“Directly accessing the Si2 OpenAccess data base by making use of our Application Programming Interface, designers and integrators have greater control over their bottom line by optimizing their design flow and, in turn, shortening product time-to-market. It’s critical that system houses like Google, along with their unique semiconductor design software needs, are now represented on the Si2 board.”

The twelve members of the Si2 board represent leading semiconductor manufacturers and foundries, fabless companies, and EDA software providers.