"I think Simutech has a tremendous opportunity to move IP and SoC forward," said Fairbairn. "One of the things that is missing today is a standard methodology and platform for evaluating IP and verifying SoCs. They have an elegant, cost-effective solution that allows you to do both."

The company's first product, Rave, is a hardware-assisted, Internet-enabled proto-typing tool that the company said will run 10,000 times faster than software simulation and 10 times faster than emulation while verifying designs with multiple IP blocks.

Fairbairn, who for years was president of the Virtual Socket Initiative Alliance, was founder and CEO of Redwood Design Automation. He said he will leverage his tenure in the industry to build up the company's staff and create business opportunities.

Besides his Simutech role, Fairbairn serves on the boards of C-Level Design, Mainbrace, SiliconX.com and the Soft-ware Development Forum.

"My expertise is in developing and introducing technologies to the EDA and semiconductor market," said Fairbairn. As president of Redwood Design, Fairbairn helped introduce cycle-based simulation to the market. Redwood's technology also served as the precursor to the Felix system-level design initiative from Cadence Design System, which bought Redwood in 1991.