Management Team

As Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, he has worked closely with lead customers and technology partners to translate Diablo’s high-speed mixed signal design expertise into a winning product portfolio. In his capacity as Chief Technical Officer, Riccardo has been defining Diablo’s technology roadmap and IP development programs since inception. Riccardo has been directly responsible for three rounds of equity financing, and has been a member of Diablo’s board of directors since the start of the company in 2002.

As a senior designer at Nortel Networks, Riccardo was pivotal in delivering one of the world’s most advanced Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) technologies for switching and framer applications. He was involved in backplane protocol engineering and developed phase align algorithms for backplane and optical link SerDes macros. Riccardo was also manager of the OEM Hardware design group at Matrox Graphics Inc., where he and his team designed and supported multiple generations of desktop motherboard platforms for all the major PC OEMs including HP, Dell, Compaq, Siemens, and Fujitsu.

Riccardo holds a Bachelor Degree in Electrical Engineering from Concordia University, where he specialized in Microwave and Optical Theory.

John brings more than 20 years of corporate finance experience in public and private companies to his role at Diablo Technologies. Prior to joining Diablo, John was CFO for PointShot Wireless, and Uplift Technologies, were he assisted both companies in securing venture capital investment and for VR Interactive Corporation, where he participated in taking this company public. As Chief Operating Officer of Jellett Biotek Limited, he secured the company’s first major round of venture capital. From 1990 to 1997, he worked for National Sea Products (now High Liner Foods Inc) where he was promoted to Corporate Treasurer in 1993.

Prior to this, John spent over 9 years working for domestic and international banks in the capital markets and treasury operations.

John holds a Bachelor Degree in Economics from Concordia University and a Masters in Business Administration from Saint Mary’s University.

Greg brings more than 26 years of experience in all areas of semiconductor operations to his role at Diablo Technologies. He has deep knowledge in semiconductor manufacturing operations including procurement and management of wafer production, assembly, test services, and quality assurance. Most recently, Greg was vice president of operations at IceFyre Semiconductor where he was responsible for the procurement and management of water production, assembly, test services, quality assurance, failure analysis, distribution and production planning.

Prior to this, he was VP Operations at SiberCore Technologies, where he and his team were responsible for bringing an entire product portfolio to production readiness and sales. Finally, he held senior operations positions at Mitel Semiconductor (Zarlink) including director of procurement where he was responsible for worldwide purchasing and sourcing activities.

As Co-Founder and Vice President, Michael completed a successful 4+ year mandate as VP R&D, which he built and managed Diablo's ASIC and Analog design teams since inception. Successful designs include Diablo's VT-Xtreme 10Gb/s repeater and VT-Roadster Advanced Memory Buffer for FB-DIMM applications. Michael is now actively involved in program and product line management activities.

Previous to Diablo, Michael led a verification team that was responsible for multi-chip verification for SONET and Ethernet protocols. He was also responsible for introducing new verification tools, as well as defining verification flows for co-simulating several network devices in a single environment. At Goal Semiconductor, Michael was the Digital Design Team manager. He was responsible for delivering digital designs that seamlessly integrated with analog sensor IP. He has held team leadership and project management positions in ASIC design, ASIC verification and system verification for Goal Semiconductor and Nortel Networks (HDX program).

Mike holds a Bachelor Degree in Electrical Engineering from Concordia University where he specialized in VLSI and ASIC design methodology

As Co-Founder and Vice President, Semiconductor Validation Labs, Franco has built and managed Diablo’s in-house test and validation facilities for semiconductor products. Franco has worked closely with leading equipment vendors to build a world-class facility within Diablo to support development work with lead customers and technology partners.

Franco was a founding member of BroadTel Communications, a start-up which was successfully acquired by Unique Broadband Systems. He was involved in system level engineering, where he specified transceivers for wireless modem applications. He was in charge of sourcing, integration, and initial field deployments.

At Canadian Marconi Company he was a test engineer in charge of production integration of wireless military radio transceivers. He was responsible for initial customer deployments and field trials in North America, the Middle East, and Asia.

Franco holds a Bachelor Degree in Electrical Engineering from Concordia University, where he specialized in Network System Engineering.

Doug Sanderson is Vice President of Engineering at Diablo Technologies Inc. Doug has 18 years of design and management experience in the semiconductor industry. He began his career in the UK with Plessey Avionics as part of the design team working military specification Global Positioning Systems (GPS). Doug moved to NEC Technologies UK Ltd where he was a key contributor and ASIC team lead on NEC's GSM handset development programs. After traveling in Asia he returned to the UK working for the next three years as a consultant at Hitachi Micro Systems before joining Canadian startup Philsar Semiconductor where he was the team lead responsible for Bluetooth baseband system development. Following the acquisition of Philsar by Conexant Systems in 2000 Doug co-founded IceFyre Semiconductor, a fabless semi company focused on high performance 802.11a wireless LAN chipsets. Most recently he was VP Product Development at Quake Technologies a 10Gbit Ethernet PHY company.

Doug holds a B.Eng. (Hons) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Strathclyde.

Cédric Paillard
Vice President
Marketing & Business Development

Cédric Paillard is Vice President Marketing at Diablo Technologies Corporation. Cédric has over 15 years experience in ASIC design and product management. Prior to Diablo Technologies, he held a series of increasingly senior technical and management positions including Director of Business Development at ENQ Semiconductor, Director of Product Line and Founder at IceFyre Semiconductor, and Senior Product Marketing Manager at Philsar Semiconductor, which was acquired by Conexant Systems. Cedric was also a Product Manager and an ASIC designer for Cadence Design Systems and NEC.

Cédric holds a Master of Science in VLSI System Engineering from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). As well, he has a Bachelor of Engineering from the Ecole Superieure de Technolgie Electrique (ESTE).

Tom Dohmen
Vice President
Sales

Tom Dohmen is the Vice President of world-wide sales for Diablo Technologies. Tom has more than 20 years of industry experience. He brings a broad range of sales and sales management experience in semiconductors, focused on identifying and developing key business opportunities both domestically and internationally for growth and established operations.

Prior to joining Diablo, Tom was Vice President of world-wide sales of Alchemy Solutions for RMI, and was chartered with managing a world-wide sales and support organization targeting consumer electronics. For PMC-Sierra, he served as Japan Sales Director in San Jose, California prior to expatriating to Yokohama, Japan for five years as Managing Director of Japan operations, establishing PMC's first sales and support office in Japan. Successes included driving PMC's sales growth in design wins and revenue in multiple market segments. At Infineon Technologies, Tom held various sales roles over a nine year period driving sales for opto-electronics to memory products. Positions included Distribution Manager, Area Sales Manager and Regional Account Manager for the Western U.S. Tom began his career at Zilog and has held product marketing positions with Samsung and Toshiba.

Tom holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration and Marketing from San Jose State University.