Cathal Phelan

Technical Advisor at Silvaco

Cathal Phelan founded the consulting firm Atticotti LLC in 2013 and has worked with a number of private equity firms, publicly listed companies, and early-stage startups as an M&A, IP, and product strategy advisor since. Mr. Phelan was the Chief Strategy Officer and then the CEO of RAPT Touch (2014-2019), a privately held provider of multi-touch system IP based on the optical technology of Frustrated Total Internal Reflection. Prior to starting Atticotti, Mr. Phelan was the CTO at Cypress Semiconductor (2008-2012) leading the team of architects choosing the IP licensed or built across the four divisions, while monetizing and managing the company’s more than 3,000 patent portfolio. Mr. Phelan was the CEO at Ubicom (2006-2008, acquired by Atheros), which developed both a proprietary real-time OS and a multi-threaded RISC processor targeting multimedia content delivery in the digital home. Mr. Phelan started his career in the Netherlands working in the Philips Research Centre (1985-1990) as a memory IC designer. In 1991 he moved to California and joined Cypress where he worked in a number of engineering and management roles in the PLD, SRAM, and USB business units, eventually becoming the GM/EVP running the Personal Communications Division and then the Data Communications Division, before leaving in 2006.

Mr. Phelan currently serves as a member of the board of directors at Impinj, Inc., having earlier served as a board member at various firms including Touchstone Semiconductor (acquired by Silicon Labs), Virage Logic (acquired by Synopsys), Cypress Envirosystems, and AgigA Tech Inc. Mr. Phelan was a member of the Technical Advisory Board at Cypress Semiconductor (2006-2008). He holds 38 US patents for architecture and circuit design in the memory, USB, and PLD fields. Mr. Phelan graduated from Trinity College Dublin, receiving a B.A. in mathematics, a B.A.I. in electronic engineering in 1984, and then an M.S.E.E. in micro-electronic engineering in 1985.

Timeline

  • Technical Advisor

    Current role