SANTA CLARA: Shastry replaces Prabhu Goel, who continues as chairman of the board. Before Tharas, Mr. Shastry founded Hality, a mobile Internet infrastructure software firm, and served as group director for logic design and verification at Cadence. "Raj brings a unique value to Tharas. He not only understands the EDA market, but he is also well versed with our end user needs," says Prabhu Goel. "He is a critical addition to the Board just when Tharas is experiencing a high level of success and acceptance in the industry." "I have heard nothing but great reviews about Hammer Hardware Accelerator from its end users. The recent survey conducted by John Cooley of ESNUG is proof positive of what Tharas has been able to accomplish," notes Raj Singh. "I look forward to working closely with the Tharas’ team." Before founding Redwood Venture Partners and Comstellar Technologies, Raj Singh has many years of experience as an engineer at National Semiconductor, Cirrus Logic and Nexgen. In 1992 he founded interHDL, which was acquired by Avant! Corporation. He later founded Cerent Systems and StratumOne Communications and seeded several EDA startups, namely, Ambit, Magma, Xpedion, Everest and Codesign Automation. "Rahm brings vision, passion, and a broad understanding of the EDA market. I have enjoyed working with him very closely over the past two years. The Tharas team has executed extremely well, and has demonstrated resounding sales successes and customer satisfaction," observes Prabhu Goel. "I am confident Rahm’s leadership will help Tharas become the market leader in the hardware-assisted verification segment of the EDA industry." "I am privileged to have worked with Prabhu Goel. His leadership and vision has matured our product and helped us find industry-wide recognition. The way in which Prabhu applied a mid-course correction to Tharas was brilliant," notes Rahm Shastry. "The Hammer hardware accelerator offers the best combination of price/performance/usability product in the hardware-assisted verification market today. I am confident we will lead this market." Rahm Shastry, who was till now senior vice president of marketing and sales, is a veteran of the EDA industry. He has a broad background in VLSI and computer systems design and has held various executive management, marketing and sales roles in the EDA industry. Previously, he worked at Cadence (NYSE: CDN) Design Systems of San Jose, Calif., in marketing positions of increasing responsibility, rising to the position of Group Director for Logic Design & Verification. At Viewlogic Systems, he held various technical marketing, applications and sales positions. He was a co-founder and CEO of TriQuest Design Automation, a behavioral synthesis startup. Most recently, Shastry founded Hality, Inc., a wireless and mobile Internet infrastructure software company. Shastry holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from State University of New York, Stony Brook N.Y.