Subject: AtopTech oddly co-announces profitability and replacing management

Santa Clara, CA, January 10, 2010 -- In a weird co-announcement today, the
EDA P&R start-up AtopTech reported that it had hit that critical milestone
of achieving profitability plus it had appointed Jue-Hsien Chern, the former
VP & GM of DSM at Mentor Graphics as its new CEO.

What's odd about this is that usually CEOs and Presidents of EDA start-ups
don't typically leave a company that they've baby sat since 2003 all the
way to profitability.  From AtopTech's coming out back in 2007:

  "The company's lead executives include co-founders Don-Min Tsou, PhD,
   president of ATopTech, and Kaiwin Lee, CEO; well-noted architect
   Ping-San Tzeng; Eric Thune, VP of sales and marketing; and Eddie
   Araki, president of ATopTech KK in Japan."

       - EDN (12/10/2007)

yet if you look at AtopTech.com today, you'll find Don-Min Tsou (founding
president) and Kaiwin Lee (founding CEO) are now both nowhere to be seen.

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Regardless of the missing people intrigues within AtopTech's palace walls,
Jue-Hsien Chern is a great choice as a replacement CEO for AtopTech.

I first met Chern in 2007.  He was Mentor's voice on my second-to-last DVcon
Troublemaker's Panels (before the DVcon Committee asked me to stop doing the
panels in 2009.)  Unlike today's typical EDA panels where the questions are
agreed upon before hand and the panelists' answers are rehearsed -- these
panels were done cold turkey where anyone could be asked *anything* and he
had to answer for his company on the spot.  Joe Sawicki was scheduled to rep
Mentor that year, but he missed his flight, so Jue-Hsien Chern was put in
Joe's place at the last minute.  Funny thing is Chern did pretty well for a
guy put on the hot seat with zero warning ahead of time.

In my book if a guy is deep EDA (like Chern is with his Avanti, TMA, and
Mentor background) and if he can think quick on his feet (like Chern did on
the 2007 Troublemaker's Panel) my gut says he should do well in a scrappy
little start-up like Atoptech.  Atoptech needs constant vigilance to avoid
being stepped on by one of the Synopsys/Cadence/Magma/Mentor P&R behemoths.
One mistake and they're dead.

    - John Cooley
      DeepChip.com                               Holliston, MA