Ikon Semiconductor has been founded by experienced industry veterans with over 40 years industry experience and with with a proven track record of delivering world class solutions, taking an idea from concept right through to end product.

The Team

Ikon Semiconductor is lead by a team of industry veterans of the semiconductor industry.

Conor McAuliffe, Founder and CEO.

Conor McAuliffe has been involved in the semiconductor industry for 21 years. After graduating from NUI Galway in 1987 with a BE in Electronic Engineering he joined Analog Devices in Limerick where he worked for 7 years as an analog IC design engineer working on a range of products including data converters and other mixed signal products targeting such applications as video, HDD (hard-disk drive) and cellular.

He left ADI in 1994 to join Parthus Technologies where he worked primarily on products for HDD and tape-drive applications and prior to leaving Parthus he was the Technical Director in their mixed-signal design group. In 2003 Conor co-founded Silansys Technologies, a mixed signal design services company, where he served as CTO. In 2005 Silansys was acquired by Frontier Silicon Ltd, a UK company focused on designing silicon and module solutions for the Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) radio market and Conor was System Architect focused on their next generation solutions for the growing streaming multi-media market.

In Jan 2009 Conor founded Ikon Semiconductor to develop integrated solutions for the rapidly growing LED lighting market. Conor also sits on the Technical Advisory Board of Movidia (www.movidia.com) a developer of low-power video processor hardware and application software for the low-power mobile phone and consumer electronics market.

Paul Grogan, CTO

Paul has been involved in the semiconductor industry for 14 years. After graduating from UCD with a B.E. (Hons), he joined Analog Devices in Limerick where he worked in the production test environment and was responsible for releasing a portfolio of converter products to market. He also developed and implemented new converter testing algorithms that significantly reduced the test time required for these products.

In 1999 Paul joined Parthus technologies as an analog/mixed-signal designer, where he focused on the specification, design and integration of power management technologies (LDO regulators, switching converters, battery chargers and switching power amplifiers) within baseband chips.

In 2003 Paul joined Silansys technologies - a mixed signal design services company where he had project management and lead design roles, in which he was responsible for the customer interface as well as the specification, design, verification and characterisation of power management macros; taking the concept from analysis of the standard or initial specification right through to production ready silicon.

In 2005 Silansys was acquired by Frontier Silicon Ltd, a UK company focused on designing silicon and module solutions for the Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) radio market where Paul held the position of analog and mixed-signal technical lead for SoC baseband development. This was a multi-tasking role which involved the complete gamut of responsibilities required to deliver an SoC for release into mass production; specification, design, sourcing IP and managing relationships with IP vendors, integration, verification, physical design, chip packaging, silicon evaluation, production test and wafer probe, silicon/package qualification and module development.