Pyxis (Santa Clara, Calif.) said the advisory board members are experts in semiconductor yield and lithography and will provide guidance in the company’s technology development and long-term roadmap.

Pyxis, founded in 2004, is developing new tools for chips being designed in sub-100 nanometer technology nodes.

“Sub-100 nanometer technologies require a new vision that merges design and manufacturing,” said Naeem Zafar, Pyxis president and CEO since May, said in a statement that the advisory board merges Pyxis' physical design expertise with manufacturing talent in lithography and yield.

"The advice of these experts will supplement our internal expertise and the input of our board of directors to provide designers with a true DFM [design-for-manufacturing] solution," Zafar said.

Grobman is a former IBM research scientist and IEEE Fellow with a Ph.D. from Princeton University. He led IBM's electron beam lithography effort, started the synchrotron X-ray lithography program and was head of the semiconductor technology development laboratory. He had also worked for Motorola’s Semiconductor Products Sector, where he was director of design-to-manufacturing solutions until he retired last year.

McDermott is the co-founder of six companies. He led engineering teams in the development of PowerPC processors and Intel x86 processors, and been granted 19 patents in microprocessor design and test.

Pan received his Ph.D. in computer science from UCLA and served as a staff member at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. His research interests include nanometer physical CAD, DFM, variation-tolerant designs, novel circuitry and CAD for low power, and vertical integration of architecture, circuit and technology.

Radojcic has a PhD from University of Salford, U.K., and more than 20 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. He served in management roles for PDF Solutions, Tality and Cadence Design Systems Inc., specializing in design technology integration and process characterization and modeling. He has also held management and engineering positions with Unisys, Burroughs, and Ferranti Electronics.

Pyxis Technology is developing software said to addresses the problems that chip designers and foundries face in the physical design, layout, and routing of nanometer-scale ICs and system-on- chips (SoCs).