Tensilica today appointed a new CEO as company founder Chris Rowen resigns the seat, moving to the position of CTO.

The Santa Clara, Calif-based company said the executive changes come as it looks to expand its management team and move into its "next phase of growth."

Tensilica's next phase has long been rumored to be an initial public offering, one that would follow the IPOs of its competitors ARM and ARC.

While newly appointed CEO Jack Guedj acknowledged that such a move is a possible step for the company's advancement, he would not confirm plans for an IPO at this time.

"Our goal is to build a great company and a company that is profitable. I would say that last quarter was a big milestone for us as we reported record revenue," he said.

"Once you build a great company - and you can build a great private company where employees and investors are happy - that's an option you can take and then you are looking at the return on investment."

Guedj comes to the customisable processors and IP core company after serving as president and CEO of Magnum Semiconductor, a provider of chips, software, and platforms for consumer entertainment and professional broadcast.

Guedj spun Magnum out of Cirrus Logic in 2005 and led Magnum's growth from its founding stage through the acquisition of LSI Logic's consumer product group in 2007.

Prior to Cirrus Logic, he was president of TVIA, a leading provider of digital display processors. There, Guedj led TVIA's IPO in 2000, an offering that was five times oversubscribed.

Guedj is also a former VP of sales and marketing at video set-top box and chip supplier, Faroudja, and director of digital media/residential broadband segments at National Semiconductor.

Considering Guedj's strong consumer electronics background, it's not surprising that he and Rowen identified opportunities for Tensillica's growth in the consumer electronics market, making specific note or interoperability needs driven by the increasing number of formats and standards.

"Clearly there is an explosion of new high-complexity consumer devices, mobile cellular devices, and communication infrastructure, which is really driving a need for incredibility high efficiency, incredibility high bandwidth, and low-cost support of many standards simultaneously," Rowen said.

"These are both highly programmable and very cost and energy driven kinds of products. They create enormous challenges from both a business and technical standpoint in how to use multiple cores, and how to optimisation the microprocessors to give you that holy grail of both completely free flexibility and extraordinary levels of efficiency in those products. ... I think Tensilica is uniquely positioned now to address that."

In his new CTO role, Rowen will continue to serve on the Tensilica board of directors, as well as the various industry groups he participates in, including the EDA Consortium. "This [position shift] gives me the opportunity to participate even more widely in some of these industry activities," he said.

"I've worked across that boundary of business and technology since day one," said Rowen. "What this does is in a sense takes a role where I was splitting myself between running the business and driving the technology to a focused [role] on half of that job. Jack is brilliantly qualified to focus on the other half of that, driving overall company business operations and strategies. My job is to work closely with customers, to figure out where the fundamental technology needs to be going in order to satisfy the grand challenge problems that are emerging in the design of complex electronics platforms and complex system on chip, and to translate both our technology vision and our customers' technology needs into the ideal set of products."

The two executives said they are currently evaluating Tensilica's operation and staff. Guedj said the company may in the near future need some additional staff, adding that more information on that would be available in the next three to four weeks.

By Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, News - Electronic News