"I always wanted to go to a start-up and this is a great opportunity for me to be CEO. Picochip's offering is a mix of hardware and software and so with 22 years in semiconductors and three in EDA, I think I've got the right background," d'Eyssautier told EE Times. D'Eyssautier has amassed experience at Philips Semiconductors, Matra-Harris, GEC-Plessey and Rockwell in a 25 year career. Immediately prior to his time at Cadence he was head of IBM's Technology Group in Europe.

Although picoChip is pursuing wireless applications, in particular WiMax and 3G, it is doing so by offering baseband silicon for basetations and its ability to do this comes from a massively parallel processing array built into its pc102 chip.

One skill that d'Eyssautier is expected to bring to PicoChip is an ability to organize sales. The company has about 50 companies evaluating its products, 12 paying customers and four companies shipping equipment to customers, d'Eyssautier said. The only released customer names are Airspan Networks Inc. and Willtek Communications. D'Eyssautier said PicoChip was moving from a startup phase where only limited numbers of partners could be engaged as products are defined to a more mature phase where the company needs to go out a sell its offering.

"We have some big companies as customers already and we're working on getting permission to release their names," d'Eyssautier said. "It's also about end customers, our upstream suppliers and our peers working on various standards. We need to create the ecosystem around PicoChip," he added. One example of that is Roke Manor Research which has been given development partner status.

Picochip appointed Anders Swahn, as chief executive officer in Nov. 2003, an executive with Silicon Valley experience who had been vice president and general manager of PMC Sierra's carrier switching division.

That appointment did not work out according to PicoChip and in March 2004 Peter Claydon, co-founder moved up from chief operating officer while the company sought a permanent chief executive. With the appointment of d'Eyssautier Claydon has returned to the role of COO.