>[!INFO] Summary > Published: [[2024-11-07 Thu]] > Author: [[Nitin Dahad]] > Platform: [[YouTube]] > Format: [[Interview]] > Length: 27m48s > Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuhjN1MKp6I > Companies: > - [[AWE LN - Alphawave]] > - [[Snowbush Microelectronics]] > - [[V Semiconductor]] > > People: > - [[Tony Pialis]] **Title:** Tony Pialis: Swing for the Fences, Do Not Limit Yourself **Description:** In this episode of Silicon Grapevine, we chat with Tony Pialis, CEO and founder of Alphawave Semi. He talks about how he connected with physics, circuits and electronics at a very early age, his journey as a twice successful entrepreneur, and how he wants his current company to be the next "big semiconductor" company. **Appearances:** - [[Tony Pialis]] <br> == Highlights == | Speaker | Text | | ------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Nitin | Welcome to this latest edition of Silicon Grapevine. My guest today is Tony Pialis who's the CEO and founder of Alphawave Semi. Tell us a little bit about the company and sort of how you're doing. | | Tony | Alphawave is a semiconductor and IP company. We focus on data center and AI. Our core mission is to deliver connectivity and compute to enable the next generation of data centers that are housing the AI that's being deployed across the world. We work with the largest hyperscalers, tier one semiconductors, and emerging semiconductor players in the industry. We're eight years old. Our ambition is to be the next great semiconductor company of the industry. That is the premise by which I founded the company on and that is the mission that I drive towards each and every day. | | Nitin | What you're doing, product wise, specifically. | | Tony | At the core we have connectivity technology for data center which could be in the forms of connectivity that drives front-end networks, like ethernet, connectivity that drives the backend networks for scale up and scale out of AI, which could be InfiniBand, or PCI Express, or CXLs. It could be connectivity for memory interfaces such as high bandwidth memory (HBM). Or connectivity on the chiplet side which is UCIe or new 3D vertically connecting of die to die (D2D) which is becoming exceedingly popular.<br><br>So given this connectivity, we deployed into four different form factors. <br><br>First, it could be silicon IP, where our technology is integrated into someone else's computer chip. <br><br>The second category is within custom silicon. We can build chips, and we do build chips, for many in the industry. The part of what we bring to the table is the silicon IP.<br><br>The third is chiplets. For the first 20 years of my career, silicon IP was a foundational building block for semiconductors. That's now changing. The complexity the number of transistors is scaling to a point where chiplets and chiplet-based devices are becoming the norm. Now what we're doing is we're bringing pre-built chiplets, pre-manufactured chiplets to the table as a new foundational building block.<br><br>The fourth form factor is -- at the speed needs that we operate, 224 gig today, 448 gig tomorrow, it's not enough just to have connectivity within the silicon -- we also deliver optoelectronics that provides connectivity within the rack, across the data center. And now with the coherent technology that we have, campus to campus, to make sure that we solve the entire connectivity solution. | | Nitin | I did a panel at OFC in San Diego earlier this year. It was around: is fiber optics the key for AI? It's interesting that we we've been talking to a few companies doing that. It'd be interesting to see how far that goes to solving that. And where copper ends and fiber optic start. | | Tony | It's inevitable. At ECOC, which is a major industry forum that's held in Frankfurt. ECOC was last week. There was an industry panel and ==the presumption is 224 gig is the end by which you can drive electrically outside of a BGA package. Then beyond that, things like co-packaged optics (CPO) or co-packaged electrical as well, starts to become a new form of technology that's going to be essential to continue to drive bandwidth and innovation in the industry.== | | Nitin | What led you to form Alphawave Semi eight years ago? | | Tony | I've been a serial entrepreneur. I've never done well taking orders from others. I had founded, scaled, and eventually sold two previous businesses. The last one was to Intel in 2012. I then spent about six years at Intel running and developing silicon IP, specifically on the connectivity side, delivering it into both internal products as well as to Intel Foundry customers. Running their IP organization, I tried to influence it, especially help it adopt a much more industry foundry mentality. Then back in 2016, a new form of connectivity called PAM4 was being talked about in the industry. I tried to drive Intel towards that path. I wasn't able to do it. I truly did believe that we had reached the end of one form of connectivity, which was called NRZ. And the industry was moving to a new form.<br><br>If I couldn't do it within Intel, then that is what gave birth to Alphawave. So then I left. I found Alphawave. And the vision and the mission was to help deploy a new generation of technology targeting PAM4 and that ushered in a new approach for connectivity.<br><br>Historically, for the first 20 years of my life, I had built connectivity very much like AM/FM radios. It was an analog form of technology. With PAM4, just because of the signal quality issues, when you go to PAM4, you need a different approach. And that approaches is very much like satellite radio; moving from terrestrial radio to satellite radio. That's what we did. We built a Digital Signal Processing (DSP) unit that supported PAM4. But here's the twist: it had the look and the feel of traditional analog type solutions. That is what the industry needed. It needed the capabilities of DSP, which the industry had done before, but it needed to be slim and agile and flexible in terms of rates like their traditional analog approaches.<br><br>We began with that. But when I founded Alphawave, the vision was always to build the next great semiconductor company. I remember when I hired my first employee, I told him, "we are building the next Broadcom here." And now I love the fact that Broadcom is poised to be the next trillion dollar tech company. That is the ambition of what we're marching towards. And so I still hold true to that mission. That's what gives me motivation each and every day. | | Nitin | Well and it's surprising when you left Intel you didn't want to go to Broadcom or Marvell or something like that. It's actually quite a bold move. | | Tony | I had done it twice before. I had thought that I wouldn't do it again but here I am. I love innovation. I love entrepreneurs. Supporting entrepreneurs in the industry is something I'll forever do. That entrepreneurial spirit I think is what made us great here in North America. It really differentiates us. There's not many around the world that have the same gusto, the same bravado, to go raise hundreds of millions of dollars. Bank your future on an engineering development that you know takes thousands of man years. And using a baseball analogy: swing for the fences. It's a rare breed. But I truly do think that's what has kept us at the forefront of technology. We here in North America continue to swing for the fences. | | Nitin | What was the company you sold to Intel? | | Tony | That was a silicon IP company called [[V Semiconductor]]. That happened in 2012. Founded that in 2008. Prior to that, I had sold our previous company [[Snowbush Microelectronics]] in 2006, I believe. | | Nitin | I have a previous guest of this podcast, who also was at Snowbush, [[Malini Moorthi]]. | | Tony | I'm based out of Toronto but I do have a a home on the west coast as well in Palo Alto. Toronto has become a a mixed signal hub over the years. I think a huge part of it is Snowbush. Great University. Great professors in that space. My Chief Technology Officer [[Tony Chan Carusone]] being the best published electrical engineering professor of all time with one of his textbooks. I think that lineage has created a great pool of engineers that is not only working at Alphawave but also helping drive many other companies in the industry. | | Nitin | I think I met Tony maybe two or three years ago at at design automation conference and he does come across as very technologically competent and knowledgeable. | | Tony | A great speaker. I hate having to do public speaking events with him because they always put me first and then he always does an amazing job and makes me look very wordy and not articulate after he follows me. He's a huge benefit to the company and he's a visionary in the industry. | Remaining transcript, clean up later: | Speaker | Text | | ------- | 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| | Nitin | so tell me let's go to a little bit about um your journey so how did you I mean did you always wanted to study um a technology subject engineering Electronics what what was this what was the the trigger | | Tony | yeah so my father was an electrician uh my brother uh became a chemical engineer uh I remember I was taking uh my final year of physics in high school and it was time to put in uh my University submissions and uh I was going through different booklets and for the electrical engineering curriculum at University of Toronto uh it talked about different experiments and uh for the various courses and physics spoke to me in high school it I really connected with it I was always good at mathematics I was very good at writing too okay I enjoyed writing so I was struggling which of these two areas do I go down the maths and the science | | Nitin | so you would have ended up with my job maybe possibly possibly a journalist or an author | | Tony | I read a story about how you could go run experiments studying lightning at the CN tower which at that time was the tallest building in the world now I think it's the third or the fourth tallest yes and I thought hey you know what that would be cool so so that pitch sold me on it I applied got into all of uh the various uh University programs that I applied to uh ended up choosing University of Toronto uh and then that was it uh and then on my first circuits course I really connected okay I I I enjoyed how electronic circuits brought in mathematics brought in physics physics uh problem solving it it kind of pulled it together for me and and so I fell in love with it uh I did internships which I'm a huge supporter of uh for anyone in the engineering domain I think you know we're a practical industry and the only way to appreciate uh what you're studying is to go put it into practice uh so where did where you do inter ATI Technologies oh yes remember that I remember the old Graphics companies everyone knows Nvidia now as this AI GPU company but for those of us old enough uh you know they originate in the world of graphics cards and it was a uh you know it there were two players in that space it was ATI and Nvidia and they would constantly battle each other releasing the you know the next generation of graphics processor uh that's when people used to play video games on computers rather than ps5s and VR headsets now uh and so yeah I I was in their analog organization uh taped out my first chips there then I went back did a master's and coming out of the Masters uh which was in the late 90s with my supervising Professor Ken Martin uh that gave birth to snow Bush right because everyone was doing startups back then uh people were becoming millionaires within a year of establishing their startups uh but look we came in uh right at 98 99 and then by 2000 uh the landscape began to change and so we were we were forced to build a company right uh two professors uh two grad students and so uh that's what we went off and and we did and we got into an uh Design Services which to me was the best learning opportunity because got to work on such a variety of different Technologies so ranging from data converters to wireless front ends to interfaces for magnetic disc drives they're called read channels uh Power amplifiers regulators and then we stumbled into the space of high-speed connectivity right okay at snowbush yeah at snowbush so uh we had one to deal with Quantum uh which used to be a hard drive company I think Max ended reiring them and so for those of us that used to build computers uh do you remember the old ATA ribbon cable to connect your hard drive to the motherboard so for those of you that don't remember is a ribbon cable that would run through a PC this thick and it was all parallel wire yes and so Quantum uh wanted to build a device that supported a new standard that was being developed called Serial ATA so move that big cable into a thin cable and that was at one and a half gigabit per second and so that's how I stumbled into high-speed connectivity very quickly PCI Express came out afterwards and there was no IP industry at that time it was all Design Services okay synopsis wasn't in the space rambus was working a little bit in the space Cadence uh was was not in the space and so we were very early players and what we did which I think was absolutely the right decision and I encourage all entrepr rurs is own your technology never give it away never sell it you need to retain ownership and by retaining ownership we were able to resell it and and that gave birth to high-speed connectivity as an IP and now you know it's a it it's a billion and a half Tam growing to a two and a half billion Tam by 2027 with snowbush you grw to sort of large company was it sort of in terms of large in terms of Design Services people or my first two business businesses uh were about similar sizes we had gotten to about 50 people uh about you know 10ish 10ish to 20ish million in Revenue across both businesses uh they both had successful exits uh and it it was great because they were both uh found or funded right so no Venture Capital uh so we were able to retain all the value within the company uh across the founders and the employees uh which uh which made those exits successful uh for everyone in the company what I learned from those two was that uh yeah I I believe that you know what limited the size of those companies was just my mindset okay okay yeah I I I needed to unleash myself in terms of believing that I could grow something bigger grow the next broadcom and and so I think those two Stepping Stones were hugely instrumental into opening myself up to believing that I could achieve any size of company that I wanted all right and and and that's what gave birth to Alpha that's what gave birth to the vision that's why we ipoed in 2021 to raise money to help Fuel and drive Capital into our R&D to grow much more rapidly and to get to the scale uh that I wanted which is building the next great Semiconductor Company of of this industry and in in this journey um | | Nitin | do you have any people that you look up to as some people who inspired you or mentors or anybody that you think wow okay I mean even if you don't have to name them you just people along the way yeah no | | Tony | I've I've had numerous mentors along the way I uh as I speak to uh young entrepreneurs I always encourage them uh to find mentors to to help uh guide them whether it's formally or informally yeah look in very stages my career there were business people and Engineering leaders uh that I looked up to uh you know the only way you learn is by making mistakes okay my back is littered with scar tissue from the mistakes I made but uh it you know it's it's okay to make mistakes not catastrophic ones uh recoverable ones but really I think what shows the nature of an individual is how you handle and recover from those mistakes and you know there were engineering leaders uh I won't mention names because I may leave someone out but engineering leaders along the way that where I had made mistakes and rather than just blame me they rolled up their sleeves and we worked together and we figured out what the problems were and we corrected the problems and those products were ultimately successful uh later in my careers as I learned to transition from being an engineer to a business person and a leader yeah you know one of my former business partners uh he was a PhD but when you talk to him you you would have never known it he was such a personable lovely human uh so outgoing you know would walk through the office and light it all up with his personality and so that had a huge impact on me right it helped guide me as to what are the qualities I wanted to exhibit uh as a leader and and then look now in in my career yeah there's there's other leaders that I've met along the way that have helped advise me through m& that have helped uh that still continue to help and advise me through my business uh and how to navigate growth and scaling and balancing uh personal relationships and being a parent uh while building the next great semic company of this industry so I've had numerous uh mentors just this last weekend I ran into one I hadn't seen in a decade and and so we immediately embraced uh it it it was a special moment | | Nitin | two-part question here what drives you every day you know what what makes you and I'm not talking about cars we'll talk about that in a minute uh what drives you every day and what excites you | | Tony | there's a vision of alpha wave that I had in my mind in day one that I still have in my mind which is being multi-billion dollar a year Revenue business right uh you know we have buildings now with our our our logo and our name on and that's very satisfying to see uh you know I we have uh products and production and customer testimonies that's very gratifying to see uh but for me it's it's getting to that scale uh I really do believe in our industry I it's you know it's one where uh you know if you're not of a significant scale uh you're not a VI viable operator you're not a viable supplier so I am racing forward as fast as I can to get to that scale okay okay and how are we doing that by bringing new products to the market uh as quickly as we can uh in order to drive Revenue as rapidly as we can uh to get to that scale and what what excites you winning uh winning yeah you know I'm I'm a competitor I think most people in our industry at this size is a competitor but look for someone to have done three startups in a span of 20 years uh and still have the Vigor and the ambition that I have it it's all about winning right it's it's winning not only for myself it's helping my customers win uh in their Endeavors and so that yeah that's that's what excites me uh taking on massive challenges which is what we're facing here Alpha wave not trying to diminish it right you know it's an industry uh surrounded by giants like like broadcom like Marvell Lake synopsis and not backing down but fiercely uh entering the the battle uh and delivering amazing technology uh you know in the in the face of this Fierce competition and | | Nitin | what about you know in your sort of hobbies your personal life here what are the things you get up to if you have time | | Tony | I know there's we talked about a few things but I guess it's all dep time so in my copious amount of free time uh when I'm not traveling or working uh or speaking to customers investors employees uh look I'm a people person uh I've always been a people person I think engineering has formed an amazing Foundation but at the Quorum of people person which is why I I believe I I migrated to where I am am today uh so being a people person means uh yeah look I I I love uh Athletics I'm on uh several uh charity boards I am uh engaged with youth Athletics uh in several Sports which kind of brings in both my own competitive nature uh my love of Athletics and my love of of people specifically children uh and some of the charity I do is also specifically targeted towards children uh so that is hugely important I'm a father obviously so uh you know making sure that I spend even though I may not have the luxury of the quantity of time that others do with their children making sure that it's it's the quality right uh try to deliver the quality and you know this is something I think most uh Executives and successful people are challenged with which is you know how do you manage both your personal and professional Ambitions as well as your your family uh and then in addition yeah look I I uh certain things I love I love to read I love cars as we were speaking about previously uh both uh gas fueled as well as uh electrical cars uh so I try to find little Snippets of opportunities to partake in my own Personal Pleasures uh amidst the work | | Nitin | final question you know what um what would you advise young Tony uh knowing what you don't now | | Tony | that is a great question uh okay yes so I talked about previously it through snowbush and V semi only after having completed both of those engagements I learned to unleash this box that was around me which which had me believing I could only accomplish so much get to a certain stage okay uh when you remove that box and you realize that your opportunities are Limitless and this you know this box is artificial uh I would have advised at a much earlier stage of my career uh swing for the fences right don't limit yourself fces yeah swing for the fence es you can do whatever you put your mind to uhu hugely important I I see so many people so many great talents just limit themselves because they don't think it's possible uh to achieve what their ultimately capable of | | Nitin | That's The Power of the mind isn't it well Tony thank you very much | | Tony | thank you nitt uh this was uh always a pleasure speaking with you look forward to chatting again soon thank you |