Pyxis Technology Promotes New President and CEO and Vice President of Engineering.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Pyxis Technology, the DFM (design for manufacturability) routing company, announced today the promotion of Joe Hutt, an industry veteran with 25 years of experience in electronic design automation (EDA) and DFM, to president and CEO. Hutt, an early investor in the company, was on the company's board of directors until July 2006, when he became vice president of engineering. His promotion reflects the company's continuing focus on technology as it transitions from product development mode to product delivery mode.

"Even before he joined Pyxis, Joe was deeply involved with our board and fundraising activities. He has been directing Pyxis' technology strategy since 2006, and he and I have worked together for years, so this is an easy transition for the development team," said company founder and CTO, P.T. Patel. "The market is beginning to realize the value of DFM tools. We look forward to having Joe's expertise behind the introduction of a next-generation router that can address yield and manufacturability issues during physical design implementation."

Joe Hutt has built and managed R&D teams and technical sales for some of the most successful companies in EDA. Most recently, he served as vice president of technical sales for Magma Design Automation Inc., after a three-year tenure as vice president of engineering. Prior to Magma, Hutt was in charge of the Advanced Technology Group at Synopsys, Inc., where he managed the Synopsys research organization. Before Synopsys, he was the program director and senior project manager for VLSI Design systems at IBM, working on advanced routing technology throughout his early career. Hutt graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Union College in New York in 1975.

"Pyxis' technology is focused on the problems posed by the development of 45nm and 32nm technologies," said Joe Hutt. "The movement of manufacturing yield design requirements into the chip design space requires routing technology that has core algorithms able to handle both design complexity and the increase in data size. Pyxis' routing technology is architected to have the flexibility to respond to both complexity and size in a very timely manner, and I look forward to bringing that technology to market."

Jim Solomon, 1997 Phil Kaufman award winner and founding member of Pyxis board of directors, had this to say about Pyxis: "I have worked with Pyxis since it was founded. They have one of the finest technology development teams I have ever worked with. There is no question that the Pyxis DFM router is the most advanced available for the 45nm and below technology nodes."

Pyxis also announced that Mitch Heins, who has held senior management positions in the semiconductor and EDA industries for over 22 years, will move from vice president of business development to vice president of engineering. Prior to joining Pyxis, Heins was senior director of silicon operations and products for HPL Technologies, Inc., running the engineering organization and responsible for all business activities of HPL's test chip division. He also has served in senior management positions at Petersen Advanced Lithography, Cadence Design Systems (focused on DFM; working with fabs and equipment manufacturers), Ambit Design Systems and CAD Framework Initiative (later renamed Silicon Integration Initiative). From 1983 to 1995, he worked in various positions at Texas Instruments, managing both engineering groups and EDA strategy and business development. Heins' involvement with a number of new product launches will complement the technical strength of Pyxis' engineering team.

Naeem Zafar, Pyxis' president and CEO from May 2005 until this month, has left the company to pursue a long-term interest in entrepreneurial development. He has joined Altair Ventures, an entry-level, high-technology investment and consulting firm that helps entrepreneurs shape their ideas into profitable companies.

About Pyxis

Pyxis Technology is creating software to address the problems that chip designers and foundries face in the physical design, layout, and routing of nanometer-scale integrated circuits (ICs) and systems on a chip (SoCs). The company is focused on DFM routing technology based on a new software architecture optimized for design for manufacturability, which reduces design closure cycle time while improving overall design yield. For more information, see www.pyxistech.com. Pyxis has offices in Santa Clara, California and Austin, Texas.